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THE DOWNFALL 


(LA DEBACLE) 

( The Smash-up') 


EMILE ZOLA 


TRANSLATED BY 

E. P. ROBINS 


'‘V J86? I 

2^6Zf3X‘ 

NEW YORK 

CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

J04 & 106 Fourth Avenue 



■v/ 


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Copyright, 1892, by 

CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 


All rights reserved. 



J ■ « - - S' 


THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS 
RAHWAY, N. J, 




THE DOWNFALL. 


PART FIRST. 


I. 

I N the middle of the broad, fertile plain that stretches away 
in the direction of the Rhine, a mile and a quarter from 
Miilhausen, the camp was pitched. In the fitful light of the 
overcast August day, beneath the lowering sky that was filled 
with heavy drifting clouds, the long lines of squat white shelter- 
tents seemed to cower closer to the ground, and the muskets, 
stacked at regular intervals along the regimental fronts, made 
little spots of brightness, while over all the sentries with loaded 
pieces kept watch and ward, motionless as statues, straining 
their eyes to pierce the purplish mists that lay on the horizon 
and showed where the mighty river ran. 

It was about five o’clock when they had come in from Bel- 
fort ; it was now eight, and the men had only just received 
their rations. There could be no distribution of wood, how- 
ever, the wagons having gone astray, and it had therefore been 
impossible for them to make fires and warm their soup. They 
had consequently been obliged to content themselves as best 
they might, washing down their dry hard-tack with copious 
draughts of brandy, a proceeding that was not calculated 
greatly to help their tired legs after their long march. Near 
the canteen, however, behind the stacks of muskets, there were 
two soldiers pertinaciously endeavoring to elicit a blaze from a 
small pile of green wood, the trunks of some small trees that 
they had chopped down with their sword-bayonets, and that 
were obstinately determined not to burn. The cloud of thick, 
black smoke, rising slowly in the evening air, added to the 
general cheerlessness of the scene. 

I'here were but twelve thousand men there, all of the 7th 


2 


THE DOWNFALL 


corps that the general, Felix Douay, had with him at the time. 
The I St division had been ordered to Froesch wilier the day 
before ; the 3d was still at Lyons, and it had been decided 
to leave Belfort and hurry to the front with the 2d division, 
the reserve artillery, and an incomplete division of cavalry. 
Fires had been seen at Lorrach. The sous-prefet at Schelestadt 
had sent a telegram announcing that the Prussians were pre- 
paring to pass the Rhine at Markolsheim. The general did 
not like his unsupported position on the extreme right, where 
he was cut off from communication with the other corps, and 
his movement in the direction of the frontier had been accel- 
erated by the intelligence he had received the day before of 
the disastrous surprise at Wissembourg. Even if he should 
not be called on to face the enemy on his own front, he felt 
that he was likely at any moment to be ordered to march to 
the relief of the ist corps. There must be fighting going on, 
away down the river near Froeschwiller, on that dark and 
threatening Saturday, that ominous 6th of August ; there was 
premonition of it in the sultry air, and the stray puffs of wind 
passed shudderingly over the camp as if fraught with tidings 
of impending evil. And for two days the division had believed 
that it was marching forth to battle ; the men had expected to 
find the Prussians in their front, at the termination of their 
forced march from Belfort to Miilhausen. 

The day was drawing to an end, and from a remote corner 
of the camp the rattling drums and the shrill bugles sounded 
retreat, the sound dying away 'faintly in the distance on the 
still air rf evening. Jean Macquart, who had been securing 
the tent and driving the pegs home, rose to his feet. When it 
began to be rumored that there was to be war he had left 
Rognes, the scene of the bloody drama in which he had lost 
his wife Frangoise and the acres that she brought him ; he had 
re-enlisted at the age of thirty-nine, and been assigned to 
the 106th of the line, of which they were at that time filling 
up the cadres, with his old rank of corporal, and there were 
moments when he could not help wondering how it ever came 
about that he, who after Solferino had been so glad to quit the 
service and cease endangering his own and other people’s lives, 
was again wearing the capote of the infantry man. But what is 
a man to do, when he has neither trade nor calling, neither 
wife, house, nor home, and his heart is heavy with mingled 
rage and sorrow? As well go and have a shot at the enemy, if 
they corne where they arc not wanted. And he remembered 


THE DOWNFALL 


3 


his old battle cry : Ah ! bon sang! if he had no longer heart 
for honest toil, he would go and defend her, his country the 
old land of France! 

When Jean was on his legs he cast a look about the camp, 
where the summons of the drums and bugles, taken up by one 
command after another, produced a momentary bustle, the 
conclusion of the business of the day. Some men were run- 
ning to take their places in the ranks, while others, already 
half asleep, arose and stretched their stiff limbs with an air of 
exasperated weariness. He stood waiting patiently for roll- 
call, with that cheerful imperturbability and determination to 
make the best of everything that made him the good soldier 
that he was. His comrades were accustomed to say of him 
that if he had only had education he would have made his 
mark. He could just barely read and write, and his aspira- 
tions did not rise even so high as to a sergeantcy. Once a 
peasant, always a peasant. 

But he found something to interest him in the fire of green 
wood that was still smoldering and sending up dense volumes 
of smoke, and he stepped up to speak to the two men who 
were busying themselves over it, Loubet and Lapoulle, both 
members of his squad. 

“Quit that ! You are stifling the whole camp.” 

Loubet, a lean, active fellow and something of a wag, re- 
plied : 

“ It will burn, corporal ; I assure you it will — why don’t you 
blow, you ! ” 

And bv way of encouragement he bestowed a kick on La- 
poulle, a colossus of a man, who was on his knees pufling away 
with might and main, his cheeks distended till they were like 
wine-skins, his face red and swollen, and his eyes starting from 
their orbits and streaming with tears. Two other men of the 
squad, Chouteau and Pache, the former stretched at length 
upon his back like a man who appreciates the delight of idle- 
ness, and the latter engrossed in the occupation of putting a 
patch on his trousers, laughed long and loud at the ridiculous 
expression on the face of their comrade, the brutish Lapoulle. 

Jean did not interfere to check their merriment. Perhaps 
the time was at hand when they would not have much occasion 
for laughter, and he, with all his seriousness and his humdrum, 
literal way of taking things, did not consider that it was part of 
his duty to be melancholy, preferring rather to close his eyes or 
look the other way when his men were enjoying themselves. 


4 


THE downfall 


But his attention was attracted to a second group not far away, 
another soldier of his squad, Maurice Levasseur, who had been 
conversing earnestly for near an hour with a civilian, a red- 
haired gentleman who was apparently about thirty-six years old, 
with an intelligent, honest face, illuminated by a pair of big 
protruding blue eyes, evidently the eyes of a near-sighted man. 
They had been joined by an artilleryman, a quartermaster- 
sergeant from the reserves, a knowing, self-satisfied-looking 
person with brown mustache and imperial, and the three stood 
talking like old friends, unmindful of what was going on about 
them. 

In the kindness of his heart, in order to save them a repri- 
mand, if not something worse, Jean stepped up to them and 
said : 

“ You had better be going, sir. It is past retreat, and if the 

lieutenant should see you ” Maurice did not permit him to 

conclude his sentence : 

“ Stay where you are, Weiss,” he said, andturning to the cor- 
poral, curtly added : “ This gentleman is my brother-in-law. 

He has a pass from the colonel, who is acquainted with him.” 

^ What business had he to interfere with other people’s affairs, 
that peasant whose hands were still reeking of the manure- 
heap ? He was a lawyer, had been admitted to the bar the pre- 
ceding autumn, had enlisted as a volunteer and been received 
into the io6th witliout the formality of passing through the re- 
cruiting station, thanks to the favor of the colonel ; it was true 
that he had condescended to carry a musket, but from the 
very start he had been conscious of a feeling of aversion and 
rebellion toward that ignorant clown under whose command he 
was. 

“Very well,” Jean tranquilly replied; “don’t blame me if 
your friend finds his way to the guardhouse.’’ 

Thereon he turned and went away, assured that Maurice had 
not been lying, for the colonel, M. de Vineuil, with his com- 
manding, high-bred manner and thick white mustache bisect- 
ing his long yellow face, passed by just then and saluted Weiss 
and the soldier with a smile. The colonel pursued his way at a 
good round pace toward a farmhouse that was visible off to 
the right among the plum trees, a few hundred feet away, where 
the staff had taken up their quarters for the night. No one 
could say whether the general commanding the 7th corps was 
there or not ; he was in deep affliction on account of the death 
of his brother, slain in the action at Wisserabourg. The 


THE DOWNFALL 


5 


brigadier, however, Boiirgain-Des-feuilles, in whose command 
the io6th was, was certain to be there, brawling as loud as ever, 
and trundling his fat body about on his short, pudgy legs, with 
his red nose and rubicund face, vouchers for the good dinners 
he had eaten, and not likely ever to become topheavy by rea- 
son of excessive weight in his upper story. There was a stir 
and movement about the farmhouse that seemed to be mo- 
mentarily increasing ; couriers and orderlies were arriving and 
departing every minute ; they were awaiting there, with feverish 
anxiety of impatience, the belated dispatches which should ad- 
vise them of the result of the battle that everyone, all that 
long August day, had felt to be imminent. Where had it been 
fought ? what had been the issue ? As night closed in and 
darkness shrouded the scene, a foreboding sense of calamity 
seemed to settle down upon the orchard, upon the scattered 
stacks of grain about the stables, and spread, and envelop 
them in waves of inky blackness. It was said, also, that a 
Prussian spy had been caught roaming about the camp, and 
that he had been taken to the house to be examined by the 
general. Perhaps Colonel de Vineuil had received a telegram 
of some kind, that he was in such great haste. 

Meantime Maurice had resumed his conversation with his 
brother-in-law Weiss and his cousin Honors Fouchard, the> 
quartermaster-sergeant. Retreat, commencing in the remote 
distance, then gradually swelling in volume as it drew near 
with its blare and rattle, reached them, passed them, and died 
away in the solemn stillness of the twilight ; they seemed to 
be quite unconscious of it. The young man was grandson to 
a hero of the Grand Army, and had first seen the light at 
Chene-Populeux, where his father, not caring to tread the path 
of glory, had held an ill-paid position as collector of taxes. 
His mother, a peasant, had died in giving him birth, him and 
his twin sister Henriette, who at an early age had become a 
second mother to him, and that he was now what he was, a 
private in the ranks, was owing entirely to his own imprudence, 
the headlong dissipation of a weak and enthusiastic nature, 
his money squandered and his substance wasted on women, 
cards, the thousand follies of the all-devouring minotaur, Paris, 
when he had concluded his law studies there and his relatives 
had impoverished themselves to make a gentleman of him. 
His conduct had brought his father to the grave; his sister, 
when he had stripped her of her little all, had been so fortu- 
nate as to find a husband in that excellent young fellow Weiss, 


6 


THE DOWNFALL 


who had long held the position of accountant in the great 
sugar refinery at Chene-Populeux, and was now foreman for 
M. Delaherche, one of the chief cloth manufacturers of Sedan. 
And Maurice, always cheered and encouraged when he saw 
a prospect of amendment in himself, and equally disheartened 
when his good resolves failqd him and he relapsed, generous 
and enthusiastic but without steadiness of purpose, a weather- 
cock that shifted with every varying breath of impulse, now 
believed that experience had done its work and taught him 
the error of his ways. He was a small, light-complexioned 
man, with a high, well-developed forehead, small nose, and 
retreating chin, and a pair of attractive gray eyes in a face that 
indicated intelligence ; there were times when his mind seemed, 
to lack balance. 

Weiss, on the eve of the commencement of hostilities, had 
found that there were family matters that made it necessary 
for him to visit Miilhausen, and had made a hurried trip to 
that city. That he had been able to employ the good offices 
of Colonel de Vineuil to afford him an opportunity of shaking 
hands with his brother-in-law was owing to the circumstance 
that that officer was own uncle to young Mme. Delaherche, a 
pretty young widow whom the cloth manufacturer had married 
the year previous, and whom Maurice and Henriette, thanks to 
their being neighbors, had known as a girl. In addition to the 
colonel, moreover, Maurice had discovered that the captain of 
his company, Beaudoin, was an acquaintance of Gilberte, Dela- 
herche’s young wife ; report even had it that she and the 
captain had been on terms of intimacy in the days when she 
was Mme. Maginot, living at Mezi^re, wife of M. Maginot, 
the timber inspector. 

“ Give Henriette a good kiss for me, Weiss,” said the young 
man, who loved his sister passionately. “ Tell her that she 
shall have no reason to complain of me, that I wish her to be 
proud of her brother.” 

Tears rose to his eyes at the remembrance of his misdeeds. 
The brother-in-law, who was also deeply affected, ended the 
painful scene by turning to Honore Fouchard, the artillery- 
man. 

“ The first time I am anywhere in the neighborhood,” he 
said, “ I will run up to Remilly and tell Uncle Fouchard that I 
saw you and that you are well.” 

Uncle Fouchard, a peasant, who owned a bit of land and 
plied the trade of itinerant butcher, serving his customers from 


THE DOWNFALL 


7 


a cart, was a brother of Henriette’s and Maurice’s mother. He 
lived at Remilly, in a house perched upon a high hill, about 
four miles from Sedan. 

“Good!” Honore calmly answered; “the father don’t 
worry his head a great deal on my account, but go there all the 
same if you feel inclined.” 

At that moment there was a movement over in the direction 
of the farmhouse, and they beheld the straggler, the man who 
had been arrested as a spy, come forth, free, accompanied only 
by a single officer. He had likely had papers to show', or had 
trumped up a story of some kind, for they were simply expel- 
ling him from the camp. In the darkening twilight, and at the 
distance they were, they could not make him out distinctly, only 
a big, square-shouldered fellow with a rough shock of reddish 
hair. And yet Maurice gave vent to an exclamation of sur- 
prise. 

“ Honore ! look there. If one wouldn’t swear he was the 
Prussian — you know, Goliah ! ” 

The name made the artilleryman start as if he had been shot; 
he strained his blazing eyes to follow the receding shape. 
Goliah Steinberg, the journeyman butcher, the man \vho had 
set him and his father by the ears, who had stolen from him 
his Silvine ; the whole base, dirty, miserable story, from which 
he had not yet ceased to suffer! He would have run after, 
would have caught him by the throat and strangled him, but 
the man had already crossed the line of stacked muskets, was 
moving off and vanishing in the darkness. 

“ Oh ! ” he murmured, “ Goliah ! no, it can’t be he. He is 
down yonder, fighting on the other side. If I ever come 
across him ” 

He shook his fist with an air of menace at the dusky horizon, 
at the wide empurpled stretch of eastern sky that stood for 
Prussia in his eyes. No one spoke ; they heard the strains of 
retreat again, but very distant now, away at the extreme end of 
the camp, blended and lost among the hum of other indis- 
tinguishable sounds. 

“ Fichtre ! ” exclaimed Honore, “ I shall have the pleasure 
of sleeping on the soft side of a plank in the guard-house un- 
less I make haste back to roll-call. Good-night — adieu, every- 
body ! ” 

And grasping Weiss by both his hands and giving them a 
hearty squeeze, he strode swiftly away toward the slight ele- 
vation where the guns of the reserves were parked, without 


8 


THE DOWNFALL 


again mentioning his father’s name or sending any word to 
Silvine, whose name lay at the end of his tongue. 

The minutes slipped away, and over toward the left, where 
the 2d brigade lay, a bugle sounded. Another, near at hand, 
replied, and then a third, in the remote distance, took up 
the strain. Presently there was a universal blaring, far and 
near, throughout the camp, whereon Gaude, the bugler of the 
company, took up his instrument. He was a tall, lank, beard- 
less, melancholy youth, chary of his words, saving his breath 
for his calls, which he gave conscientiously, with the vigor of 
a young hurricane. 

Forthwith Sergeant Sapin, a ceremonious little man with 
large vague eyes, stepped forward and began to call the roll. 
He rattled off the names in a thin, piping voice, while the men, 
who had come up and ranged themselves in front of him, re- 
sponded in accents of varying pitch, from the deep rumble of 
the violoncello to the shrill note of the piccolo. But there 
came a hitch in the proceedings. 

“ Lapoulle ! ” shouted the sergeant, calling the name a 
second time with increased emphasis. 

There was no response, and Jean rushed off to the place 
where Private Lapoulle, egged on by his comrades, was in- 
dustriously trying to fan the refractory fuel into a blaze ; flat 
on his stomach before the pile of blackening, spluttering 
wood, his face resembling an underdone beefsteak, the war- 
rior was now propelling dense clouds of smoke horizontally 
along the surface of the plain. 

“ Thunder and ouns ! Quit that, will you ! ” yelled Jean, 

and come and answer to your name.” 

Lapoulle rose to his feet with a dazed look on his face, then 
appeared to grasp the situation and yelled : “ Present ! ” in 
such stentorian tones that Loubet, pretending to be upset by 
the concussion, sank to the ground in a sitting posture, Pache 
had finished mending his trousers and answered in a voice that 
was barely audible, that sounded more like the mumbling of a 
prayer. Chouteau, not even troubling himself to rise, grunted 
his answer unconcernedly and turned over on his side.. 

Lieutenant Rochas, the officer of the guard, was meantime 
standing a few steps away, motionlessly Awaiting the conclusion 
of the ceremony. When Sergeant Sapin had finished calling, 
the roll and came up to report that all were present, the officer, 
with a glance at Weiss, who was still conversing with Maurice, 
growled from under his mustache : 


THE DOWNFALL 


9 


Yes, and one over. What is that civilian doing here ? ” 

“ He has the colonel's pass, Lieutenant,” explained Jean, who 
had heard the question. 

Rochas made no reply ; he shrugged his shoulders disap- 
provingly and resumed his round among the company streets 
while waiting for taps to sound. Jean, stiff and sore after his 
day’s march, went and sat down a little way from Maurice, 
whose murmured words fell indistinctly upon his unlisten- 
ing ear, for he, too, had vague, half formed reflections of his 
own that were stirring sluggishly in the recesses of his muddy, 
torpid mind. 

Maurice was a believer in war in the abstract ; he considered 
it one of the necessary evils, essential to the very existence of 
nations. This was nothing more than the logical sequence of 
his course in embracing those theories of evolution which in 
those days exercised such a potent influence on our young men 
of intelligence and education. Is not life itself an unending 
battle ? Does not all nature owe its being to a series of relent- 
less conflicts, the survival of the fittest, the maintenance 
and renewal of force by unceasing activity ; is not death a 
necessary condition to young and vigorous life ? And he 
remembered the sensation of gladness that had filled his 
heart when first the thought occurred to him that he might ex- 
piate his errors by enlisting and defending his country on the 
frontier. It^ight be that France of the plebiscite, while giving 
itself over to the Emperor, had not desired war ; he himself, 
only a week previously, had declared it to be a culpable and 
idiotic measure. There were long discussions concerning the 
right of a German prince to occupy the throne of Spain ; as the 
question gradually became more and more intricate and mud- 
dled it seemed as if everyone must be wrong, no one right ; 
so that it was impossible to tell from which side the provocation 
came, and the only part of the entire business that was clear to 
the eyes of all was the inevitable, the fatal law which at a 
given moment hurls nation against nation. Then Paris was 
convulsed from center to circumference ; he remembered that 
burning summer’s night, the tossing, struggling human tide 
that filled the boulevards, the bands of men brandishing torches 
before the Hotel de Ville, and yelling : “ On to Berlin ! on to 
Berlin ! ” and he seemed to hear the strains of the Marseil- 
laise, sung by a beautiful, stately woman with the face of a 
queen, wrapped in the folds of a flag, from her elevation on 
the box of a coach. Was it all a lie, was it true that the heart 


lO 


THE DOWNFALL 


of Paris had not beaten then ? And then, as was always 
the case with him, that condition of nervous excitation had 
been succeeded by long hours of doubt and disgust ; there 
were all the small annoyances of the soldier’s life ; his arrival 
at the barracks, his examination by the adjutant, the fitting of 
his uniform by the gruff sergeant, the malodorous bedroom 
with its fetid air and filthy floor, the horseplay and coarse lan- 
guage of his new comrades, the merciless drill that stiffened his 
limbs and benumbed his brain. In a week’s time, however, he 
had conquered his first squeamishness, and from that time 
forth was comparatively contented with his lot ; and when the 
regiment was at last ordered forward to Belfort the fever of 
enthusiasm had again taken possession of him. 

For the first few days after they took the field Maurice was 
convinced that their success was absolutely certain. The Em- 
peror’s plan appeared to him perfectly clear : he would ad- 
vance four hundred thousand men to the left bank of the 
Rhine, pass the river before the Prussians had completed their 
])reparations, separate northern and southern Germany by a 
vigorous inroad, and by means of a brilliant victory or two com- 
pel Austria and Italy to join hands immediately with France. 
Had there not been a short-lived rumor that that 7th corps 
of which his regiment formed a part was to be embarked at 
Brest and landed in Denmark, where it would create a diver- 
sion that would serve to neutralize one of the Prussian armies ? 
They would be taken by surprise ; the arrogant nation would be 
overrun in every direction and crushed utterly within a few 
brief weeks. It would be a military picnic, a holiday excursion 
from Stras’oourg to Berlin. While they were lying inactive at 
Belfort, however, his former doubts and fears returned to him. 
To the 7th corps had been assigned the duty of guarding the 
entrance to the Black Forest ; it had reached its position in a 
state of confusion that exceeded imagination, deficient in men, 
material, everything. The 3d division was in Italy ; the 
2d cavalry brigade had been halted at Lyons to check a 
threatened rising among the people there, and three batteries 
had straggled off in some direction — where, no one could say. 
Then their destitution in the way of stores and supplies was 
something wonderful ; the depots at Belfort, which were to 
have furnished everything, were empty ; not a sign of a tent, no 
mess-kettles, no flannel belts, no hospital supplies, no farriers’ 
forges, not even a horse-shackle. The quartermaster’s and 
medical departments were without trained assistants. At the 


THE DOWNFALL 


II 


very last moment it was discovered that thirty thousand rifles 
were practically useless owing to the absence of some small pin 
or other interchangeable mechanism about the breech-blocks, 
and the officer who posted off in hot haste to Paris succeeded 
with the greatest difficulty in securing five thousand of the 
missing implements. Their inactivity, again, was another 
matter that kept him on pins and needles ; why did they idle 
away their time for two weeks? why did they not advance? 
He saw clearly that each day of delay was a mistake that could 
never be repaired, a chance of victory gone. And if the plan 
of campaign that he had dreamed of was clear and precise, its 
manner of execution was most lame and impotent, a fact of 
which he was to learn a great deal more later on and of which 
he had then only a faint and glimmering perception : the seven 
army corps dispersed along the extended frontier line en echelon^ 
from Metz to Bitche and from Bitche to Belfort ; the many 
regin[]ents and squadrons that had been recruited up to only 
half-strength or less, so that the four hundred and thirty 
thousand men on paper melted away to two hundred and thirty 
thousand at the outside ; the jealousies among the generals, 
each of whom thought only of securing for himself a marshal’s 
baton, and gave no care to supporting his neighbor ; the 
frightful lack of foresight, mobilization and concentration being 
carried on simultaneously in order to gain time, a process that 
resulted in confusion worse confounded ; a system, in a word, 
of dry rot and slow paralysis, which, commencing with the head, 
with the Emperor himself, shattered in health and lacking in 
promptness of decision, could not fail ultimately to communicate 
itself to the whole army, disorganizing it and annihilating its 
efficiency, leading it into disaster from which it had not the 
means of extricating itself. And yet, over and above the dull 
misery of that period of waiting, in the intuitive, shuddering 
perception of what must infallibly happen, his certainty that 
they must be victors in the end remained unimpaired. 

On the 3d of August the cheerful news had been given to 
the public of the victory of Sarrebruck, fought and won the 
day before. It could scarcely be called a great victory, but 
the columns of the newspapers teemed with enthusiastic gush ; 
the invasion of Germany was begun, it was the first step in 
their glorious march to triumph, and the little Prince Imperial, 
who had coolly stooped and picked up a bullet from the battle- 
field, then commenced to be celebrated in legend. Two days 
later, however, when intelligence came of the surprise and de- 


12 


THE DOWNFALL 


feat at Wissembourg, every mouth was opened to emit a cry of 
rage and distress. That five thousand men, caught in a trap, 
had faced thirty-five thousand Prussians all one long summer 
day, that was not a circumstance to daunt the courage of any- 
one ; it simply called for vengeance. Yes, the leaders had 
doubtless been culpably lacking in vigilance and were to be 
censured for their want of foresight, but that would soon be 
mended MacMahon had sent for the ist division of the 7th 
corps, the ist corps would be supported by the 5th, and the 
Prussians must be across the Rhine again by that time, with 
the bayonets of our infantry at their backs to accelerate their 
movement. And so, beneath the deep, dim vault of heaven, 
the thought of the battle that must have raged that day, the 
feverish impatience with which the tidings were awaited, the 
horrible feeling of suspense that pervaded the air about them, 
spread from man to man and became each minute more tense 
and unendurable. 

Maurice was just then saying to Weiss : 

“ Ah ! we have certainly given them a righteous good drub- 
bing to-day.” 

Weiss made no reply save to nod his head with an air of anx- 
iety. His gaze was directed toward the Rhine, on that Orient 
region where now the night had settled down in earnest, like a 
wall of blackness, concealing strange forms and shapes of mys- 
tery. The concluding strains of the bugles for roll-call had 
been succeeded by a deep silence, which had descended upon 
the drowsy camp and was only broken now and then by the 
steps and voices of some wakeful soldiers. A light had been 
lit — it looked like a twinkling star — in the main room of the 
farmhouse where the staff, which is supposed never to sleep, 
was awaiting the telegrams that came in occasionally, though 
as yet they were undecided. And the green wood fire, now 
finally left to itself, was still emitting its funereal wreaths of 
dense black smoke, which drifted in the gentle breeze over the 
unsleeping farmhouse, obscuring the early stars in the heavens 
above. 

“A drubbing ! ” Weiss at last replied, “God grant it may be 
so ! ” 

Jean, still seated a few steps away, pricked up his ears, while 
Lieutenant Rochas, noticing that the wish was attended by a 
doubt, stopped to listen. 

“What ! " Maurice rejoined, “have you not confidence? can 
you believe that defeat is possible?” 


THE DOWNFALL 


13 


His brother-in-law silenced him with a gesture ; his hands 
were trembling with agitation, his kindly pleasant face was pale 
and bore an expression of deep distress. 

“ Defeat, ah ! Heaven preserve us from that ! You know 
that I was born in this country ; my grandfather and grand- 
mother were murdered by the Cossacks in 1814, and whenever 
I think of invasion it makes me clench my fist and grit my 
teeth ; I could go through fire and flood, like a trooper, in my 
shirt sleeves ! Defeat — no, no ! I cannot, I will not believe it 
possible.” 

He became calmer, allowing his arms to fall by his side in 
discouragement. 

“ But my mind is not easy, do you see. I know Alsace ; I 
was born there ; I am just off a business trip through the 
country, and we civilians have opportunities of seeing many 
things that the generals persist in ignoring, although they have 
them thrust beneath their very eyes. Ah, we wanted war with 
Prussia as badly as anyone ; for a long, long time we have 
been waiting patiently for a chance to pay off old scores, but 
that did not prevent us from being on neighborly terms with 
the people in Baden and Bavaria ; every one of us, almost, has 
friends or relatives across the Rhine. It was our belief that 
they felt like us and would not be sorry to humble the intoler- 
able insolence of the Prussians. And now, after our long 
period of uncomplaining expectation, for the past two weeks we 
have seen things going from bad to worse, and it vexes and 
terrifies us. Since the declaration of war the enemy’s horse 
have been suffered to come among us, terrorizing the villages, 
reconnoitering the country, cutting the telegraph wires. Baden 
and Bavaria are rising; immense bodies of troops are being 
concentrated in the Palatinate ; information reaches us from 
every quarter, from the great fairs and markets, that our frontier 
is threatened, and when the citizens, the mayors of the com- 
munes, take the alarm at last and hurry off to tell your officers 
what they know, those gentlemen shrug their shoulders and 
reply : Those things spring from the imagination of cowards ; 
there is no enemy near here. And when there is not an hour 
to lose, days and days are wasted. What are they waiting for ? 
To give the whole German nation time to concentrate on the 
other bank of the river ?” 

His words were uttered in a low, mournful voice, as if he 
were reciting to himself a story that had long occupied his 
thoughts, 


14 


THE DOWNFALL 


“ Ah ! Germany, I know her too well ; and the terrible part 
of the business is that you soldiers seem to know no more 
about her than you do about China. You must remember my 
cousin Gunther, Maurice, the young man who came to pay me 
a flying visit at Sedan last spring. His mother is a sister of 
my mother, and married a Berliner ; the young man is a Ger- 
man out and out ; he detests everything French. He is a 
captain in the 5th Prussian corps. I accompanied him to 
the railway station that night, and he said to me in his 
sharp, peremptory way: ‘If France declares war on us, she 
will be soundly whipped ! ’ 1 can hear his words ringing in my 

ears yet.” 

Forthwith, Lieutenant Rochas, who had managed to contain 
himself until then, not without some difficulty, stepped forward 
in a towering rage. He was a tall, lean individual of about 
fifty, with a long, weather-beaten, and wrinkled face ; his 
inordinately long nose, curved like the beak of a bird of prey, 
over a strong but well- shaped mouth, concealed by a thick, 
bristling mustaclie that was beginning to be touched with 
silver. And he shouted in a voice of thunder : 

“ See here, you, sir ! what yarns are those that you are retail- 
ing to dishearten my men ? ” 

Jean did not interfere with his opinion, but he thought that 
the last speaker was right, for he, too, wfliile beginning to be 
conscious of the protracted delay, and the general confusion 
in their affairs, had never had the slightest doubt about that 
terrible thrashing they were certain to give the Prussians. 
There could be no question about the matter, for was not that 
the reason of their being there ? 

“ But I am not trying to dishearten anyone. Lieutenant,” 
Weiss answered in, astonishment. “ Quite the reverse ; I am 
desirous that others should know what I know, because then 
they will be able to act with their eyes open. Look here! that 
Germany of which we were speaking ” 

And he went on in his clear, demonstrative way to explain' 
the reason of his fears : how^ Prussia had increased her resources 
since Sadowa ; how the national movement had placed her at 
the head of the other German states, a mighty empire in proc- 
ess of formation and rejuvenation, wuth the constant hope 
and desire for unity as the incentive to their irresistible efforts ; 
the system of compulsory military service, wfliich made them a 
nation of trained soldiers, provided with the most effective 
arms of modern invention, wdth generals who were masters in 


THE DOWNFALL 


15 


the art of strategy, proudly mindful still of the crushing defeat 
they had administered to Austria ; the intelligence, the moral 
force that resided in that army, commanded as it was almost 
exclusively by young generals, who in turn looked up to 
a commander-in-chief who seemed destined to revolutionize 
the art of war, whose prudence and foresight \yere unparalleled, 
whose correctness of judgment was a thing to wonder at. And 
in contrast to that picture of Germany he pointed to France : 
the Empire sinking into senile decrepitude, sanctioned by the 
plebiscite, but rotten at its foundation, destroying liberty, and 
therein stifling every idea of patriotism, ready to give up the 
ghost as soon as it should cease to satisfy the unworthy ap- 
petites to which it had given birth ; then there was the army, 
brave, it was true, as was to be expected from men of their 
race, and covered with Crimean and Italian laurels, but vitiated 
by the system that permitted men to purchase substitutes for a 
money consideration, abandoned to the antiquated methods of 
African routine, too confident of victory to keep abreast with 
the more perfect science of modern times ; and, finally, the 
generals, men for the most part not above mediocrity, con- 
sumed by petty rivalries, some of them of an ignorance beyond 
all belief, and at their head the Emperor, an ailing, vacillating 
man, deceiving himself and everyone with whom he had deal- 
ings in that desperate venture on which they were embarking, 
into which they were all rushing blindfold, with no preparation 
worthy of the name, with the panic and confusion of a flock of 
sheep on its way to the shambles. 

Rochas stood listening, open-mouthed, and with staring 
eyes ; his terrible nose dilated visibly. Then suddenly his 
lantern jaws parted to emit an obstreperous, Homeric peal of 
laughter. 

“ What are you giving us there, you ? what do you mean by 
all that silly lingo ? Why, there is not the first word of sense 
in your whole harangue — it is too idiotic to deserve an answer. 
Go and tell those things to the recruits, but don’t tell them to 
me ; no ! not to me, who have seen twenty-seven years of ser- 
vice.” 

And he gave himself a thump on the breast with his doubled 
fist. He was the son of a master mason who had come from 
Limousin to Paris, where the son, not taking kindly to the pa- 
ternal handicraft, had enlisted at the age of eighteen. He had 
been a soldier of fortune and had carried the knapsack, was 
corporal in Africa, sergeant in the Grimea, and after Solferino 


i6 


THE DOWNFALL 


had been made lieutenant, having devoted fifteen years of la- 
borious toil and heroic bravery to obtaining that rank, and was 
so illiterate that he had no chance of ever getting his captaincy. 

“ You, sir, who think you know everything, let me tell you a 
thing you don’t know. Yes, at Mazagran I was scarce nineteen 
years old, and there were twenty-three of us, not a living soul 
more, and for more than four days we held out against twelve 
thousand Arabs. Yes, indeed ! for years and years, if you had 
only been with us out there in Africa, sir, at Mascara, at Bis- 
kra, at Dellys, after that in Grand Kabylia, after that again at 
Laghouat, you would have seen those dirty niggers run like 
deer as soon as we showed our faces. And at Sebastopol, sir, 
fichtre ! you wouldn’t have said it was the pleasantest place in 
the world. The wind blew fit to take a man’s hair out by the 
roots, it was cold enough to freeze a brass monkey, and those 
beggars kept us on a continual dance with their feints and sorties. 
Never mind ; we made them dance in the end ; we danced 
them into the big hot frying pan, and to quick music, too ’ 
And Solferino, you were not there, sir ! then why do you speak 
of it? Yes, at Solferino, where it was so hot, although I sup- 
pose more rain fell there th^ day than you have seen in your 
whole life, at Solferino, where we had our little brush with the 
Austrians, it would have warmed your heart to see how they 
vanished before our bayonets, riding one another down in their 
haste to get away from us, as if their coat tails were on fire ! ” 

He laughed the gay, ringing laugh of the daredevil French 
soldier ; he seemed to expand and dilate with satisfaction. It 
was the old story : the French trooper going about the world 
with his gill on his arm and a glass of good wine in his hand ; 
thrones upset and kingdoms conquered in the singing of a 
merry song. Given a corporal and four men, and great armies 
would bite the dust. His voice suddenly sank to a low, rum- 
bling bass : 

“ What ! whip France ? We, whipped by those Prussian pigs, 
we ! ” He came up to Weiss and grasped him violently by the 
lapel of his coat. His entire long frame, lean as that of the 
immortal Knight Errant, seemed to breathe defiance and un- 
mitigated contempt for the foe, whoever he might be, regardless 
of time, place, or any other circumstance. “ Listen to what I 
tell you, sir. If the Prussians dare to show their faces here, 
we will kick them home again. You hear me ? we will kick . 
them from here to Berlin.” His bearing and manner were su- J 
perb ; the serene tranquillity of the child, the candid convic-* 


The downfall 


tion of the innocent who knows nothing and fears nothing. 
'' Farbleu! it is so, because it is so, and that’s all there is about 
it ! ” 

Weiss, stunned and almost convinced, made haste to declare 
that he wished for nothing better. As for Maurice, who had 
prudently held his tongue, not venturing to express an opinion 
in presence of his superior officer, he concluded by joining in 
the other’s merriment ; he warmed the cockles of his heart, 
that devil of a man, whom he nevertheless considered rather 
stupid. Jean, too, had nodded his approval at every one of the 
lieutenant’s assertions. He had also been at Solferino, where 
it rained so hard. And that showed what it was to have a 
tongue in one’s head and know how to use it. If all the 
leaders had talked like that they would not be in such a 
mess, and there would be camp-kettles and flannel belts in 
abundance. 

It was quite dark by this time, and Rochas continued to 
gesticulate and brandish his long arms in the obscurity. His 
historical studies had been confined to a stray volume of Na- 
poleonic memoirs that had found its way to his knapsack from 
a peddler’s wagon. His excitement refused to be pacified 
and all his book-learning burst from his lips in a torrent of elo- 
quence : 

“We flogged the Austrians at Castiglione, at Marengo, at 
Austerlitz, at Wagram ; we flogged the Prussians at Eylau, at 
Jena, at Lutzen ; we flogged the Russians at Friedland, at 
Smolensk and at the Moskowa ; we flogged Spain and England 
everywhere ; all creation flogged, flogged, flogged, up and 
down, far and near, at home and abroad, and now you tell me 
that it is we who are to take the flogging ! Why, pray tell me ? 
How ? Is the world coming to an end ?” He drew his tall 
form up higher still and raised his arm aloft, like the staff of a 
battle-flag. “ Look you, there has been a fight to-day, down 
yonder, and we are waiting for the news. Well ! I will tell 
you what the news is — I will tell you, I ! We have flogged the 
Prussians, flogged them until they didn’t know whether they 
were a-foot or a-horseback, flogged them to powder, so that they 
had to be swept up in small pieces ! ’’ 

At that moment there passed over the camp, beneath the 
somber heavens, a loud, wailing cry. Was it the plaint of 
some nocturnal bird ? Or was it a mysterious voice, reaching 
them from some far-distant field of carnage, ominous of dis- 
aster ? The whole camp shuddered, lying there in the black 


THE DOWNFALL 


i8 

shadows, and the strained, tense sensation of expectant anxiety 
that hung, miasma-like, in the air became more strained, more 
feverish, as they waited for telegrams that seemed as if they 
would never come. In the distance, at the farmhouse, the 
candle that lighted the dreary watches of the staff burned up 
more brightly, with an erect, unflickering flame, as if it had 
been of wax instead of tallow. 

But it was ten o’clock, and [Gaude, rising to his feet from 
the ground where he had been lost in the darkness, sounded 
taps, the first in all the camp. Other bugles, far and near, 
took up the strain, and it passed away in the distance with a 
dying, melancholy wail, as if the angel of slumber had already 
brushed with his wings the weary men. And Weiss, who had 
lingered there so late, embraced Maurice affectionately ; cour- 
age, and hope ! he would kiss Henrietfe for her brother and 
would have many things to tell uncle Fouchard when they 
met. Then, just as he was turning to go, a rumor began to 
circulate, accompanied by the wildest excitement. A great 
victory had been won by Marshal MacMahon, so the report 
ran ; the (howii Prince of Prussia a prisoner, with tw^enty-five 
thousand men, the enemy’s army repulsed and utterly de- 
stroyed, its guns and baggage abandoned to the victors. 

“ Didn’t I tell you so ! ” shouted Rochas, in his most thun- 
dering voice. Then, running after Weiss, who, light of heart, 
w^as hastening to get back to Miilhausen : “To Berlin, sir, 
and we’ll kick them every step of the way ! ” 

A quarter of an hour later came another dispatch, announc- 
ing that the army had been compelled to evacuate Woerth and 
was retreating. Ah, what a night was that ! Rochas, over- 
])owered by sleep, wrapped his cloak about him, threw him- 
self down on the bare ground, as he had done many a time 
before. Maurice and Jean sought the shelter of the tent, into 
which were crowded, a confused tangle of arms and legs, Loubet, 
Chouteau, Pache, and Lapoulle, their heads resting on their 
knapsacks. There was room for six, provided they were 
careful how they disposed of their legs. Loubet, by w'ay of 
diverting his comrades and making them forget their hunger, 
had labored for some time to convince Lapoulle that there 
was to be a ration of poultry issued the next morning, but they 
were too sleepy to keep up the joke ; they were snoring, and 
the Prussians might come, it was all one to them. Jean lay 
for a moment without stirring, pressing close against Maurice ; 
notwithstanding his fatigue he was unable to sleep ; he could 


THE DOWNFALL 


19 


not help thinking of the things that gentleman had said, how 
all Germany was up in arms and preparing to pour her devas- 
tating hordes across the Rhine ; and be felt that his tentmate 
was not sleeping, either — was thinking of the same things as he. 
Then the latter turned over impatiently and moved away, and 
the other understood that his presence was not agreeable. 
There was a lack of sympathy between the peasant and the 
man of culture, an enmity of caste and education that amounted 
almost to physical aversion. The former, however, experienced 
a sensation of shame and sadness at this condition of affairs ; he 
shrinkingly drew in his limbs so as to occupy as small a space as 
possible, endeavoring to escape from the hostile scorn that he 
was vaguely conscious of in his neighbor. But although the 
night wind without had blown up chill, the crowded tent was 
so stifling hot and close that Maurice, in a fever of exasperation, 
raised the flap, darted out, and went and stretched himself on 
the ground a few steps away. That made Jean still more un- 
happy, and in his half-sleeping, half-waking condition he had 
troubled dreams, made up of a regretful feeling that no one 
cared for him, and a vague apprehension of impending calamity 
of which he seemed to hear the steps approaching with meas- 
ured tread from the shadowy, mysterious depths of the un- 
known. 

Two hours passed, and all the camp lay lifeless, motionless 
under the oppression of the deep, weird darkness, that was in- 
stinct with some dreadful horror as yet without a name. Out 
of the sea of blackness came stifled sighs and moans : from an 
invisible tent was heard something that sounded like the groan 
of a dying man, the fitful dream of some tired soldier. Then 
there were other sounds that to the strained ear lost their 
familiarity and became menaces of approaching evil ; the 
neighing of a charger, the clank of a sword, the hurrying steps 
of some belated prowler. And all at once, off toward the can- 
teens, a great light flamed up. The entire front was brilliantly 
illuminated ; the long, regularly aligned array of stacks stood 
out against the darkness, and the ruddy blaze, reflected from 
the burnished barrels of the rifles, assumed the hue of new-shed 
blood ; the erect, stern figures of the sentries became visible 
in the fiery glow. Could it be the enemy, whose presence the 
leaders had been talking of for the past two days, and on whose 
trail they had come out from Belfort to Miilhausen ? Then a 
shower of sparks rose high in the air and the conflagration 
subsided. It was only the pile of green wood that had been so 


20 


THE DOWNFALL 


long the object of Loubet’s and Lapoulle’s care, and which, 
after having smoldered for many hours, had at last flashed up 
like a fire of straw. 

Jean, alarmed by the vivid light, hastily left the tent and was 
near falling over Maurice, who had raised his head and was 
watching the scene, supporting himself on his elbow. The 
darkness seemed by contrast more opaque than it had been be- 
fore, and the two men lay stretched on the bare ground, a few 
paces from each other. All that they could descry before them 
in the dense shadows of the night was the window of the farm- 
house, faintly illuminated by the dim candle, which shone with 
a sinister gleam, as if it were doing duty by the bedside of a 
corpse. What time was it ? two o’clock, or three, perhaps. It 
was plain that the staff had not made acquaintance with their 
beds that night. They could hear Bourgain-Desfeuilles’ loud, 
disputatious voice ; the general was furious that his rest 
should be broken thus, and it required many cigars and toddies 
to pacify him. More telegrams came in ; things must be going 
badly ; silhouettes of couriers, faintly drawn against the un- 
certain sky line, could be descried, galloping madly. There 
was the sound of scuffling steps, imprecations, a smothered cry 
as of a man suddenly stricken down, followed by a blood-freez- 
ing silence. What could it be ? Was it the end ? A breath, 
chill and icy as that from the lips of death, had passed over 
the camp that lay lost in slumber and agonized expectation. 

It was at that moment that Jean and Maurice recognized in 
the tall, thin, spectral form that passed swiftly by, their colonel, 
de Vineuil. He was accompanied by the regimental surgeon. 
Major Bouroche, a large man with a leonine face. They were 
-conversing in broken, unfinished sentences, whisperingly, such 
a conversation as we sometimes hear in dreams. 

“ It came by the way of Basle. Our ist division all cut to 
pieces. The battle lasted twelve hours; the whole army is re- 
treating ” 

The colonel’s specter halted and called by name another 
specter, which came lightly forward ; it was an elegant ghost, 
faultless in uniform and equipment. 

“ Is that you, Beaudoin ?” 

“ Yes, Colonel.” 

“Ah! bad news, my friend, terrible news! MacMahon 
beaten at Froeschwiller, Frossard beaten at Spickeren, and be- 
tween them de Failly, held in check where he could give no 
assistance. At Froeschwiller it was a single corps against an 


THE DOWNFALL 


21 


entire army ; they fought like heroes. It was a complete rout, 
a panic, and now France lies open to their advance " 

His tears choked further utterance, the words came from his 
lips unintelligible, and the three shadows vanished, swallowed 
up in the obscurity. 

Maurice rose to his feet ; a shudder ran through his frame. 

“Good God ! ’’ he stammeringly exclaimed. 

And he could think of nothing else to say, while Jean, in 
whose bones the very marrow seemed to be congealing, mur- 
mured in his resigned manner : 

“ Ah, worse luck ! The gentleman, that relative of yours, 
was right all the same in saying that they are stronger than 
we.” 

Maurice was beside himself, could have strangled him. The 
Prussians stronger than the French ! The thought made his 
blood boil. The peasant calmly and stubbornly added : 

“That don’t matter, mind you. A man don’t give up 
whipped at the first knock-down he gets. We shall have to 
keep hammering away at them all the same.” 

But a tall figure arose before them. Tliey recognized Rochas, 
still wrapped in his long mantle, whom the fugitive sounds 
about him, or it may have been the intuition of disaster, had 
awakened from his uneasy slumber. He questioned them, in- 
sisted on knowing all. When he was finally brought, with much 
difficulty, to see how matters stood, stupor, immense and pro- 
found, filled his boyish, inexpressive eyes. More than ten 
times in succession he repeated : 

^“Beaten ! How beaten ? Why beaten ?” 
f And that was the calamity that had lain hidden in the black- 
ness of that night of agony. And now the pale dawn was ap- 
pearing at the portals of the east, heralding a day heavy with 
bitterest sorrow and striking white upon the silent tents, in one 
of which began to be visible the ashy faces of Loubet and La- 
poulle, of Chouteau and of Pache, who were snoring still with 
wide-open mouths. Forth from the thin mists that were slowly 
creeping upward from the river off yonder in the distance came 
Vthe new day, bringing with it mourning and affliction. 


22 


THE DOWNFALL 


11 . 

A bout eight o’clock the sun dispersed the heavy clouds, 
and the broad, fertile plain about Miilhausen lay basking 
in the warm, bright light of a perfect August Sunday. From 
the camp, now awake and bustling with life, could be heard 
the bells of the neighboring parishes, pealing merrily in the 
limpid air. The cheerful Sunday following so close on ruin and 
defeat had its own gayety, its sky was as serene as on a holiday. 

Gaude suddenly took his bugle and gave the call that 
announced the distribution of rations, whereat Loubet appeared 
astonished. What was it? What did it mean ? Were they going 
to give out chickens, as he had promised Lapoulle the night 
before ? He had been born in the Halles, in the Rue de la 
Cossonerie, was the unacknowledged son of a small huckster, 
had enlisted “ for the money there was in it,” as he said, after 
having been a sort of Jack-of- all-trades, and was now the gour- 
mand, the -epicure of the company, continually nosing aft^r 
something good to eat. But he went off to see what was going 
on, while Chouteau, the company artist, house-painter by trade 
at Belleville, something of a dandy and a revolutionary re- 
publican, exasperated against the government for having called 
him back to the colors after he had served his time, was cruelly 
chaffing Pache, whom he had discovered on his knees, behind 
the tent, preparing to say his prayers. There was a pious man 
for you ! Couldn’t he oblige him, Chouteau, by interceding 
with God to give him a hundred thousand francs or some such 
small trifle? B it Pache, an insignificant little fellow with a 
head running up. to a point, who had come to them from some 
hamlet in the wilds of Picardy, received the other's raillery 
with the uncomplaining gentleness of a martyr. He was the 
butt of the squad, he and Lapoulle, the colossal brute who had 
got his growth in the marshes of the Sologne, so utterly 
ignorant of everything that on the day of his joining the 
regiment he had asked his comrades to show him the King. 
And although the terrible tidings of the disaster at Froesch- 
willer had been known throughout the camp since early morning, 
the four men laughed, joked, and went about their usual tasks 
with the indifference of so many machines. 

But there arose a murmur of pleased surprise. It was 
occasioned by Jean, the corporal, coming back from the com- 
missary’s, accompanied by Maurice, with a load of firewood. 


TKE DOIVNFALL 


n 


So, they were giving out wood at last, the lack of which the 
night before had deprived the men of their soup ! Twelve 
hours behind time, only ! 

“ Hurrah for the commissary ! ” shouted Chouteau. 

“ Never mind, so long as it is here," said Loubet. “ Ah ! 
won’t I make you a hwWy pot- au-feu ! " 

He was usually quite willing to take charge of the mess ar- 
rangements, and no one was inclined to say him nay, for he 
cooked like an angel. On those occasions, however, Lapoulle 
would be given the most extraordinary commissions to execute. 

“ Go and look after the champagne — Go out and buy some 
truffles " 

On that morning a queer conceit flashed across his mind, 
such a conceit as only a Parisian gamin contemplating the 
mystification of a greenhorn is capable of entertaining : 

“ Look alive there, will you ! Come, hand me the chicken." 

“ The chicken! what chicken, where ?" 

*‘VVhy, there on the ground at your feet, stupid ; the chicken 
that I promised you last night, and that the corporal has just 
brought in." 

He pointed to a large, white, round stone, and Lapoulle, 
speechless with wonder, finally picked it up and turned it 
about between his fingers. 

“ A thousand thunders 1 Will you wash the chicken ! More 
yet; wash its claws, wash its neck ! Don’t be afraid of the 
water, lazybones ! " 

And for no reason at all except the joke of it, because the 
prospect of the soup made him gay and sportive, he tossed the 
stone along with the meat into the kettle filled with water. 

“That’s what will give the bouillon a flavor I Ah, you didn’t 
know that, sacree aTidouille ! You shall have the pope’s nose; 
you’ll see how tender it is." 

The squad roared with laughter at sight of Lapoulle’s face, 
who swallowed everything and was licking his chops in antici- 
pation of the feast. That funny dog, Loubet, he was the man 
to cure one of the dumps if anybody could ! And when the 
fire began to crackle in the sunlight, and the kettle commenced 
to hum and bubble, they ranged themselves reverently about it 
in a circle with an expression of cheerful satisfaction on their 
faces, watching the meat as it danced up and down and snif- 
fing the appetizing odor that it exhaled. They were as hungry 
as a pack of wolves, and the prospect of a square meal made 
them forgetful of all beside. They had had to take a thrash- 


24 


THE DOWNFALL 


ing, but that was no reason why a man should not fill his 
stomach. * Fires were blazing and pots were boiling from one 
end of the camp to the other, and amid the silvery peals of the 
bells that floated from Miilhausen steeples mirth and jollity 
reigned supreme. 

But just as the clocks were on the point of striking nine a 
commotion arose and spread among the men ; officers came 
running up, and Lieutenant Rochas, to whom Captain Beau- 
doin had come and communicated an order, passed along in 
front of the tents of his platoon and gave the command : 

“ Pack everything ! Get yourselves ready to march ! ” 

“ But the soup ? ” 

“ You will have to wait for your soup until some other day ; 
we are to march at once.” 

Gaude’s bugle rang out in imperious accents. Then every- 
where was consternation ; dumb, deep rage was depicted on 
every countenance. What, march on an empty stomach ! 
Could they not wait a little hour until the soup was ready ! 
The squad resolved that their bouillon should not go to waste, 
but it was only so much hot water, and the uncooked meat was 
like leather to their teeth. Chouteau growled and grumbled, 
almost mutinously. Jean had to exert all his authority to 
make the men hasten their preparations. What was the great 
urgency that made it necessary for them to hurry off like that? 
What good was there in hazing people about in that style, 
without giving them time to regain their strength ? And Mau- 
rice shrugged his shoulders incredulously when someone said 
in his hearing that they were about to march against the Prus- 
sians and settle old scores with them. In less than fifteen 
minutes the tents were struck, folded, and strapped upon the 
knapsacks, the stacks were broken, and all that remained of 
the camp was the dying embers of the fires on the bare ground. 

There were reasons of importance that had induced General 
Douay's determination to retreat immediately. The despatch 
from the sous-pr^fet at Schelestadt, now three days old, was 
confirmed ; there were telegrams that the fires of the Prus- 
sians, threatening Markolsheim, had again been seen, and 
again, another telegram informed them that one of the enemy’s 
army corps was crossing the Rhine at Huningue ; the intelli- 
gence was definite and abundant ; cavalry and artillery had 
been sighted in force, infantry had been seen, hastening from 
every direction to their point of concentration. Should they 
wait 'an hour the enemy would surely be in their rear and 


THE DOWNFALL 


25 


retreat on Belfort would be impossible. And now, in the 
shock consequent on defeat, after Wissembourg and Froesch- 
willer, the general, feeling himself unsupported in his exposed 
position at the front, had nothing left to do but fall back in 
all haste, and the more so that what news he had received that 
morning made the situation look even worse than it had ap- 
peared the night before. 

The staff had gone on ahead at a sharp trot, spurring their 
horses in the fear lest the Prussians might get into Altkirch 
before them. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, aware that he had 
a hard day’s work before him, had prudently taken Miilhausen 
in his way, where he fortified himself with a copious breakfast, 
denouncing in language more forcible than elegant such hurried 
movements. And Miilhausen watched with sorrowful eyes the 
officers trooping through her streets ; as the news of the retreat 
spread the citizens streamed out of their houses, deploring the 
sudden departure of the army for whose coming they had 
prayed so earnestly : they were to be abandoned, then, and all 
the costly merchandise that was stacked up in the railway 
station was to become the spoil of the enemy ; within a few 
hours their pretty city was to be in the hands of foreigners ? 
The inhabitants of the villages, too, and of isolated houses, as 
the staff clattered along the country roads, planted themselves 
before their doors with wonder and consternation depicted on 
their faces. What ! that army, that a short while before they 
had seen marching forth to battle, was now retiring without 
having fired a shot ? The leaders were gloomy, urged their 
chargers forward and refused to answer questions, as if ruin and 
disaster were galloping at their heels. It was true, then, that 
the Prussians had annihilated the army and were streaming into 
France from every direction, like the angry waves of a stream 
that had burst its barriers? And already to the frightened 
peasants the air seemed filled with the muttering of distant 
invasion, rising louder and more threatening at every instant, 
and already they were beginning to forsake their little homes 
and huddle their poor belongings into farm-carts ; entire 
families might be seen fleeing in single file along the roads that 
were choked with the retreating cavalry. 

In the hurry and confusion of the movement the 106th was 
brought to a halt at the very first kilometer of their march, 
near the bridge over the canal of the Rhone and Rhine. 
The order of march had been badly planned and still more 
badly executed, so that the entire 2d division was collected 


26 


THE DOWNFALL 


there in a huddle, and the way was so narrow, barely more 
than sixteen feet in width, that the passage of the troops was 
obstructed. 

Two hours elapsed, and still the io6th stood there watching 
the seemingly endless column that streamed along before their 
eyes. In the end the men, standing at rest with ordered arms, 
began to become impatient. Jean’s squad, whose position 
happened to be opposite a break in the line of poplars where 
the sun had a fair chance at them, felt themselves particularly 
aggrieved. 

“ Guess we must be the rear-guard,” Loubet observed with 
good-natured raillery. 

But Chouteau scolded : “ They don’t value us at a brass 
farthing, and that’s why they let us wait this way. We were 
here first ; why didn’t we take the road while it was empty ? ” 

And as they began to discern more clearly beyond the 
canal, across the wide fertile plain, along the level roads 
lined with hop-poles and fields of ripening grain, the move- 
ment of the troops retiring along the same way by which 
they had advanced but yesterday, gibes and jeers rose on 
the air in a storm of angry ridicule. 

“ Ah, we are taking the back track,” Chouteau continued. 
“ I wonder if that is the advance against the enemy that they 
have been dinning in our ears of late ! Strikes me as rather 
queer ! No sooner do we get into camp than we turn tail 
and make off, never even stopping to taste our soup.” 

The derisive laughter became louder, and Maurice, who was 
next to Chouteau in the ranks, took sides with him. Why 
could they not have been allowed to cook their soup and eat 
it in peace, since they had done nothing for the last two hours 
but stand there in the road like so many sticks ? Their hun- 
ger was making itself felt again ; they had a resentful recol- 
lection of the savory contents of the kettle dumped out pre- 
maturely upon the ground, and they could see no necessity 
for this headlong retrograde movement, which appeared to 
them idiotic and cowardly. What chicken-livers they must 
be, those generals ! 

But Lieutenant Rochas came along and blew up Sergeant 
Sapin for not keeping his men in better order, and Captain 
Beaudoin, very prim and starchy, attracted by the disturb- 
ance, appeared upon the scene. 

Silence in the ranks ! ” 

Jean, an old soldier of the army of Italy who knew what 


THE DOWNFALL 


27 


' discipline was, looked in silent amazement at Maurice, who 
appeared to be amused by Chouteau’s angry sneers ; and he 
^ ' wondered how it wa& that a monsieur, a young man of his ac- 
• quirements, could listen approvingly to things — they might 
be true, all the same — but that should not be blurted out in 
public. The army would never accomplish much, that was 
^ certain, if the privates were to take to criticizing the generals 
: and giving their opinions. 

; At last, after another hour’s waiting, the order was given for 
the io6th to advance, but the bridge was still so encumbered 
by the rear of the division that the greatest confusion pre- 
\ vailed. Several regiments became inextricably mingled, and 
whole companies were swept away and compelled to cross 
t whether they would or no, while others, crowded off to the 
‘ side of the road, had to stand there and mark time ; and by 

t way of putting the finishing touch to the muddle, a squadron 

; 'of cavalry insisted on passing, pressing back into the adjoining 
’ fields the stragglers that the infantry had scattered along the 
; roadside. At the end of an hour’s march the column had 
entirely lost its formation and was dragging its slow length 
. along, a mere disorderly rabble. 

Thus it happened that Jean found himself away at the rear, 
' lost in a sunken road, together with his squad, whom he had 
/ been unwilling to abandon. The io6th had disappeard, nor 
was there a man or an officer of their company in sight. 

^ About them were soldiers, singly or in little groups, from all 

^ the regiments, a weary, foot-sore crew, knocked up at the 
beginning of the retreat, each man straggling on at his own 
sweet will whithersoever the path that he was on might chance 
to lead him. The sun beat down fiercely, the heat was stifling, 
and the knapsack, loaded as it was with the tent and 
implements of every description, made a terrible burden 
on the shoulders of the exhausted men. To many of 
them the experience was an entirely new one, and the 
heavy great-coats they wore seemed to them like vest- 
ments of lead. The first to set an example for the 
others was a little pale faced soldier with watery eyes ; he drew 
mp beside the road and let his knapsack slide off into the ditch, 
heaving a deep sigh as he did so, the long drawn breath of a 
dying man who feels himself coming back to life. 

“ There’s a man who knows what he is about,” muttered 
Chouteau. 

He still continued to plod along, however, his back bend- 


28 


THE DOWNFALL 


ing beneath its weary burden, but when he saw two others 
relieve themselves as the first had done he could stand it no 
longer. “ Ah ! ziit ! ” he exclaimed, and with a quick upward 
jerk of the shoulder sent his kit rolling down an embankment. 
Fifty pounds at the end of his backbone, he had had enough 
of it, thank you ! He was no beast of burden to lug that load 
about. 

Almost at the same moment Loubet followed his lead and 
incited Lapoulle to do the same. Pache, who had made the 
sign of the cross at every stone crucifix they came to, un- 
buckled the straps and carefully deposited his load at the foot 
of a low wall, as if fully intending to come back for it at some 
future time. And when Jean turned his head for a look at 
his men he saw that every one of them had dropped his bur- 
den except Maurice. 

“ Take up your knapsacks unless 5^ou want to have me put 
under arrest ! 

But the men, although they did not mutiny as yet, were 
silent and looked ugly ; they kept advancing along the narrow 
road, pushing the corporal before them. 

“ Will you take up your knapsacks ! if you don’t I will 
report you,” 

It was as if Maurice had been lashed with a whip across 
the face. Report them ! that brute of a peasant would report 
those poor devils for easing their aching shoulders ! And 
looking Jean defiantly in the face, he, too, in an impulse of 
blind rage, slipped the buckles and let his knapsack fall to 
the road. 

“ Very well,” said the other in his quiet way, knowing that 
resistance would be of no avail, “ we will settle accounts to- 
night,” 

> Maurice’s feet hurt him abominably ; the big, stiff shoes, to 
which he was not accustomed, had chafed the flesh until the 
blood came. He was not strong; his spinal column felt as if 
it were one long raw sore, although the knapsack that had 
caused the suffering was no longer there, and the weight of 
his piece, which he kept shifting from one shoulder to the 
other, seemed as if it would drive all the breath from his body. 
Great as his physical distress was, however, his moral agony 
was greater still, for he was in the depths of one of those fits 
of despair to which he was subject. At Paris the sum of his 
wrongdoing had been merely the foolish outbreaks of ^ the 
Other man,” as he put it, of his weak, boyish nature, capable 


THE DOWHFATL 


59 


of more serious delinquency should he be subjected to tempta- 
tion, but now, in this retreat that was so like a rout, in which 
he was dragging himself along with weary steps beneath a 
blazing sun, he felt all hope and courage vanishing from his 
heart, he was but a beast in that belated, straggling herd that 
filled the roads and fields. It was the reaction after the 
terrible disasters at Wissembourg and Froesch wilier, the echo 
• of the thunder-clap that had burst in the remote distance, 
leagues and leagues away, rattling at the heels of those panic- 
stricken men who were flying before they had ever seen an 
enemy. What was there to hope for now ? Was it not all 
ended ? They were beaten ; all that was left them was to lie 
down and die. 

“ It makes no difference,” shouted Loubet, with the blague 
/"of a child of the Halles, “ but this is not the Berlin road we 
^^^are traveling, all tl^ same.” 

To Berlin ! To Berlin ! The cry rang in Maurice’s ears, / 
ithe yell of the swarming mob that filled the boulevards on / 
ithat midsummer night of frenzied madness when he had( 
determined to enlist. The gentle breeze had become a de- ^ 
vastating hurricane ; there had been a terrific explosion, and / 
all the sanguine temper of his nation had manifested itself in I 
his absolute, enthusiastic confidence, which had vanished \ 
^utterly at the very first reverse, before the unreasoning im- 
)ulse of despair that was sweeping him away among those 
vagrant soldiers, vanquished and dispersed before they had 
struck a stroke. 

“This confounded blunderbuss must weigh a ton, I think,” 
Loubet went on. “ This is fine music to march by ! ” And 
alluding to the sum he received as substitute; “I don’t 
care what people say, but fifteen hundred ‘balls ’for a job 
like this is downright robbery. Just think of the pipes he’ll 
smoke, sitting by his warm fire, the stingy old miser in whose 
place I’m going to get my brains knocked out ! ” 

“ As for me,” growled Chouteau, “ I had finished my time. 

I was going to cut the service, and they keep jme for their 
beastly war. Ah ! true as I stand here, I must have been 
born to bad luck to have got myself into such a mess. And 
now the officers are going to let the Prussians knock us about 
as they please, and we’re dished and done for.” He had 
been swinging his piece to and fro in his hand ; in his dis- 
couragement he gave it a toss and landed it on the other side 
of the hedge. “ Eh ! get you gone for a dirty bit of old iron ! ” 


3 ^ 


THE downfall 


The musket made two revolutions in the air and fell Into a 
furrow, where it lay, long and motionless, reminding one 
somehow of a corpse. Others soon flew to join it, and pres- 
ently the field was filled with abandoned arms, lying in long 
winrows, a sorrowful spectacle beneath the blazing sky. It 
was an epidemic of madness, caused by the hunger that was 
gnawing at their stomach, the shoes that galled their feet, 
their weary march, the unexpected defeat that had brought 
the enemy galloping at their heels. There was nothing more 
to be accomplished ; their leaders were looking out for them- 
selves, the commissariat did not even feed them ; nothing but 
weariness and worriment ; better to leave the whole business 
at once, before it was begun. And what then ? why, the 
musket might go and keep the knapsack company ; in view 
of the work that was before them they might at least as well 
keep their arms free. And all down the long line of stragglers 
that stretched almost far as the eye could reach in the smooth 
and fertile country the muskets flew through the air to the ac- 
companiment of jeers and laughter such as would have be- 
fitted the inmates of a lunatic asylum out for a holiday. 

Loubet, before parting with his, gave it a twirl as a drum- 
major does his cane. Lapoulle, observing what all his com- 
rades were doing, must have supposed the performance to be 
some recent innovation in the manual, and followed suit, while 
Pache, in the confused idea of duty that he owed to his reli- 
gious education, refused to do as the rest were doing and was 
loaded with obloquy by Chouteau, who called him a priest’s 
whelp. 

“ Look at the sniveling papist ! And all because his old 
peasant of a mother used to make him swallow the holy wafer 
every Sunday in the village church down there ! Be off with 
you and go serve mass ; a man who won’t stick with his com- 
rades when they arc right is a poor-spirited cur.” 

Maurice toiled along dejectedly in silence, bowing his head 
beneath the blazing sun. At every step he took he seemed to 
be advancing deeper into a horrid, plantom-haunted night- 
mare ; it was as if he saw a yawning, gaping gulf before him 
toward which he was inevitably tending ; it meant that he was 
suffering himself to be degraded to the level of the miserable 
beings by whom he was surrounded, that he was prostituting 
his talents and his position as a man of education. 

^ “ H’old ! ” he said abruptly to Chouteau, “ what you say is 
right ; there is truth in it.” 


THE DOWNFALL 


31 


And already he had deposited his musket upon a pile of 
stones, when Jean, who had tried without success to check the 
shameful proceedings of his men, saw what he was doing and 
hurried toward him. 

“ Take up your musket, at once ! Do you hear me ? take it 
up at once ! ” 

Jean’s face had flushed with sudden anger. Meekest and 
most pacific of men, always prone to measures of conciliation, 
his eyes were now blazing with-wrath, his voice spoke with the 
thunders of authority. His men had never before seen him in 
such a state, and they looked at one another in astonishment. 

“ Take up your musket at once, or you will have me to deal 
with ! ” 

Maurice was quivering with anger ; he let fall one single 
word, into which he infused all the insult that he had at conT 
mand : 

“ Peasant ! ” 

“ Yes, that’s just it ; I am a peasant, while are a 

gentleman ! And it is for that reason that you are a pig ! 
Yes ! a dirty pig ! I make no bones of telling you of it.” 

Yells, and cat-calls arose all around him, but the corporal 
continued with extraordinary force and dignity : 

“ When a man has learning he shows it by his actions. If 
we are brutes and peasants, you owe. us the benefit of your 
example, since you know more than we do. Take up your 
musket, or Noju de Dieu! 1 will have you shot the first halt 
we make.” 

Maurice was daunted ; he stooped and raised the weapon in 
his hand. Tears of rage stood in his eyes. He reeled like a 
drunken man as he labored onward, surrounded by his com- 
rades, who now were jeering at him for having yielded. Ah, 
that Jean ! he felt that he should never cease to hate him, cut 
to the quick as he had been by that bitter lesson, which he 
could not but acknowledge he had deserved. And when 
Chouteau, marching at his side, growled : “ When corporals 
are that way, we just wait for a battle and blow a hole in ’em,” 
the landscape seemed red before his eyes, and he had a dis- 
tinct vision of himself blowing Jean’s brains out from behind 
a wall. 

But an incident occurred to divert their thoughts ; Loubet 
noticed that while the dispute was going on Pache had also 
abandoned his musket, laying it down tenderly at the foot of 
an embankment. Why ? What were the reasons that had 


32 


THE DOWNFALL 


made him resist the example of his comrades in the first place, 
and what were the reasons that influenced him now ? He 
probably could not have told himself, nor did he trouble his 
head about the matter, chuckling inwardly with silent enjoy- 
ment, like a schoolboy who, having long been held up as 
a model for his mates, commits his first offense. He strode 
along with a self-contented, rakish air, swinging his arms ; 
and still along the dusty, sunlit roads, between the golden 
grain and the fields of hops that succeeded one another with 
tiresome monotony, the human tide kept pouring onward ; the 
stragglers, without arms or knapsacks, w^ere now but a shuf- 
fling, vagrant mob, a disorderly array of vagabonds and 
beggars, at whose approach the frightened villagers barred 
their doors. 

Something that happened just then capped the climax of 
Maurice’s misery. A deep, rumbling noise had for some time 
been audible in the distance ; it was the artillery, that had been 
the last to leave the camp and whose leading guns now wheeled 
into sight around a bend in the road, barely giving the foot- 
sore infantrymen time to seek safety in the fields. It w^as an 
entire regiment of six batteries, and came up in column, in 
splendid order, at a sharp trot, the colonel riding on the flank 
at the center of the line, every officer at his post. The guns 
went rattling, bounding by, accurately maintaining their pre- 
scribed distances, each accompanied by its caisson, men and 
horses, beautiful in the perfect symmetry of its arrangement ; 
and in the 5th battery Maurice recognized his cousin Honore. 
A very smart and soldierly appearance the quartermaster- 
sergeant presented on horseback in his position on the left 
hand of the forward driver, a good-looking, light-haired man, 
Adolphe by name, whose mount was a sturdy chestnut, admira- 
bly matched with the mate that trotted at its side, vvdiile in his 
proper place among the six men who were seated on the chests 
of the gun and its caisson was the gunner, Louis, a small, dark 
man, Adolphe’s comrade ; they constituted a team, as it is 
called, in accordance with the rule of the service that couples 
a mounted and an unmounted man together. They all ap- 
peared bigger and taller to Maurice, somehow, than when he 
first made their acquaintance at the camp, and the gun, to 
which four horses were attached, followed by its caisson drawn 
by six, seemed to him as bright and refulgent as a sun, tended 
and cherished as it was by its attendants, men and animals, 
who dosed around it protectingly as if it had been a living 


THE DOWNFALL 


33 


sentient relative ; and then, besides, the contemptuous look 
that Honore, astounded to behold him among that unarmed 
rabble, cast on the stragglers, distressed him terribly. And 
now the tail end of the regiment was passing, the math'iel of 
the batteries, prolonges, forges, forage- wagons, succeeded by 
the rag-tag, the spare men and horses, and then all vanished 
in a cloud of dust at another turn in the road amid the 
gradually decreasing clatte/ of hoofs and wheels. 

^^Fardi!" exclaimed I.oubet, “it’s not such a difficult 
matter to cut a dash when one travels with a coach and 
four ! ” 

The staff had found Altkirch free from the enemy ; not a 
Prussian had shown his face there yet. It had been the gen- 
eral’s wish, not knowing at what moment they might fall upon 
his rear, that the retreat should be continued to Dannemarie, 
and it was not until five o’clock that the heads of columns 
reached that place. Tents were hardly pitched and fires 
lighted at eight, when night closed in, so great was the confu- 
sion of the regiments, depleted by the absence of the strag- 
glers. The men were completely used up, were ready to drop 
with fatigue and hunger. Up to eight o’clock soldiers, singly 
and in squads, came trailing in, hunting for their commands ; 
all that long train of the halt, the lame, and the disaffected 
that we have seen scattered along the roads. 

As soon as Jean discovered where his regiment lay he went 
in quest of Lieutenant Rochas to make his report. He found 
him, together with Captain Beaudoin, in earnest consultation 
with the colonel at the door of a small inn, all of them anx- 
iously waiting to see what tidings roll-call would give them as 
to the whereabouts of their missing men. The moment the 
corporal opened his mouth to address the lieutenant. Colonel 
de Vineuil, who heard what the subject was, called him up and 
compelled him to tell the whole stor}’’. On his long, yellow 
Lice, where the intensely black eyes looked blacker still con- 
trasted with the thick snow-white hair and the long, droop- 
ing mustache, there was an expre.ssion of patient, silent sorrow, 
and as the narrative proceeded, how the miserable wretches 
deserted their colons, threw away arms and knapsacks, and 
wandered off like vagabonds, grief and shame traced two new 
furrows on his blanched cheeks. 

“ Colonel,” exclaimed Captain Beaudoin, in his incisive 
voice, not waiting for his superior to give an opinion, “ it will 
be best to shoot half a dozen of those wretches.” 


34 


THE DOWNFALL 


And the lieutenant nodded his head approvingly. But the 
colonel’s despondent look expressed his powerlessness. 

“ There are too many of them. Nearly seven hundred ! . 
how are we to go to work, whom are we to select ? And then 
you don’t know it, but the general is opposed. He wants to 
be a father to his men, says he never punished a soldier all the 
time he was in Africa. No, no ; we shall have to overlook it. 

I can do nothing. It is dreadful.”. 

The captain echoed : “Yes, it is dreadful. It means de- 
struction for us all.” 

Jean was walking off, having said all he had to say, when he 
heard Major Bouroche, whom he had not seen where he was 
standing in the doorway of the inn, growl in a smothered voice : 
“No more punishment, an end to discipline, the army gone to 
the dogs ! Before a week is over the scoundrels will be ripe 
for kicking their officers out of camp, while if a few of them 
had been" made an example of on the spot it might have 
brought the remainder to their senses.” 

No one was punished. Some officers of the rear guard that 
was protecting the trains had been thoughtful enough to col- 
lect the muskets and knapsacks scattered along the. road. 
They were almost all recovered, and by daybreak the men 
were equipped again, the operation being conducted very 
quietly, as if to hush the matter up as much as possible. 
Orders were given to break camp at five o’clock, but reveille 
sounded at four and the retreat to Belfort was hurriedly con- 
tinued, for everyone was certain that the Prussians were only 
two or three leagues away. Again there was nothing to eat but 
dry biscuit, and as a consequence of their brief, disturbed rest 
and the lack of something to warm their stomachs the men were 
weak as cats. Any attempt to enforce discipline on the march 
that morning was again rendered nugatory by the manner of 
their departure. 

The day was worse than its predecessor, inexpressibly^ 
gloomy and disheartening. The aspect of the landscape had 
changed, they were now in a rolling country where the roads 
f they were always alternately climbing and descending were 
bordered with woods of pine and hemlock, while the narrow 
gorges were golden with tangled thickets of broom. But panic 
j and terror lay heavy on the fair land that slumbered there 
1 beneath the bright sun of August, and had been hourly gath- 
ering strength since the proceed iirg day. A fresh dispatch, 
bidding the mayors of communes warn the people that they 


THE DOWNFALL 


35 


A 


Would do well to hide their valuables, had excited universal 
consternation, d'he enemy was at hand, then ! Would time 
be given them to make their escape ? And to all it seemed 
that the roar of invasion was ringing in their ears, coming 
nearer and nearer, the roar of the rushing torrent that, starting 
from Mulhausen, had grown louder and more ominous as it ad- 
vanced, and to which every village that it encountered in its 
course contributed its own alarm amid the sound of wailing 
and lamentation. • 

Maurice stumbled along as best he might, like a man walking 
in a dream ; his feet were bleeding, his shoulders sore with the 
weight of gun and knapsack. He had ceased to think, he ad- 
vanced automatically into the vision of horrors that lay before 
his eyes ; he had ceased to be conscious even of the shuffling 
tramp of the comrades around him, and the only thing that was 
not dim and unreal to his sense was Jean, marching at his side 
and enduring the same fatigue and horrible distress. It was 
lamentable to behold the villages they passed through, a sight 
to make a man’s heart bleed with anguish. No sooner did the 
inhabitants catch sight of the troops retreating in disorderly 
array, with haggard faces and bloodshot eyes, than they be- 


stirred themselves to hasten their flight. 

confident only a short half month 
/Women 
/certain 


d'hey who had been 
ago, those men and 
of Alsace, who smiled when war was mentioned, 
that it would be fought out in Germany ! And now 
France was invaded, and it was among them, above their 
abodes, in their fields, that the tempest was to burst, like one 
of those dread cataclysms that lay waste a province in an hour 
when the lightnings flash and the gates of heaven are opened! 
(karts were backed up against doors and men tumbled their 
furniture into them in wild confusion, careless of what they 
broke'. From the upper windows the women threw out a last 
mattress, or handed down the child’s cradle, that they had 
been near forgetting, whereon baby would be tucked in 
securely and hoisted to the top of the load, where he reposed 
serenely among a grove of legs of chairs and upturned tables. 
At the back of another cart was the decrepit old grandfather 
/ tied with cords to a wardrobe, and he was hauled away for all 
/ the world as if he had been one of the family chattels. Then 
I there were those who did not own a vehicle, so they piled their 
I household goods- haphazard on a wheelbarrow, while others 
I carried an armful of clothing, and others still had thought 
i only of saving the clock, which they went off pressing to their 


THE downfall 


36 

bosom as if it had been a darling child. They found 
they could not remove everything, and there were chairs and 
tables, and bundles of linen too heavy to carry, lying abandoned 
in the gutter. Some before leaving had carefully locked their 
dwellings, and the houses bad a deathlike appearance, with 
their barred doors and windows, but the greater number, in their 
haste to get away and with the sorrowful conviction that noth- 
ing would escape destruction, had left their poor abodes 
open, and the yawning apertures displayed the nakedness of 
the dismantled rooms ; and those were the saddest to behold, 

\ with the horrible sadness of a city upon which some great 
dread has fallen, depopulating it, those poor houses opened 
to the winds of heaven, whence the very cats had fled as if 
•j forewarned of the impending doom. At every village the 
I pitiful spectacle became more heartrending, the number of 
1 the fugitives was greater, as they clove their way through the 
ever thickening press, with hands upraised, amid oaths and 
tears. 

But in the open country as they drew near Belfort, Maurice’s 
heart was still more sorely wrung, for there the homeless fugi- 
tives were in greater numbers and lined the borders of the 
road in an unbroken cortege. Ah ! the unhappy ones, who 
, had believed that they were to find safety under the walls of 
the fortifications ! The father lashed the poor old nag, the 
mother followed after, leading her crying children by the hand, 
and in this way entire families, sinking beneath the weight of 
their burdens, were strung along the white, blinding road in 
the fierce sunlight, where the tired little legs of the smaller 
children were unable to keep up with the headlong flight. 
Many had taken off their shoes and were going barefoot so as 
to get over the ground more rapidly, and half-dressed mothers 
gave the breast to their crying babies as they strode along. 
Affrighted faces turned for a look backward, trembling hands 
were raised as if to shut out the horizon from their sight, while 
the gale of panic tumbled their unkempt locks and sported • 
with their ill-adjusted garments. Others there were, farmers 
I and their men, who pushed straight across the fields, driving 
before them their flocks and herds, cows, oxen, sheep, horses, 
that they had driven with sticks and cudgels from their stables ; 

I these were seeking the shelter of the inaccessible forests, of 
; the deep valleys and the lofty hill-tops, their course marked 
■ by clouds of dust, as in the great migrations of other days, 
when invaded nations made way before their barbarian con- 


THE DOIVNEALL 


37 


cjuerors. They were going to live in tents, in some lonely 
nook among the mountains, where the enemy would never 
venture to follow them ; and the bleating and bellowing of the 
animals and the trampling of their hoofs upon the rocks grew 
tainter in the distance, and the golden nimbus that overhung 
them was lost to sight among the thick pines, while down in 
the road beneath the tide of,vehicles and pedestrians was flow- 
ing still as strong as ever, blocking the passage of the troops, 
and as they drew near Belfort the men had to beTrought to a 
halt again and again, so irresistible was the force of that torrent 
of humanity. 

It was during one of those short halts that Maurice witnessed 
a scene that was destined to remain indelibly impressed upon 
his memory. 

Standing by the road-side was a lonely house, the abode of 
some poor peasant, whose lean acres extended up the mountain- 
side in the rear. The man had been unwilling to leave the 
little field that was his all and had remained, for to go away 
would have been to him like parting with life. He could be 
seen within the low-ceiled room, sitting stupidly on a bench, 
watching with dull, lack-luster eyes the passage of the troops 
whose retreat would give his ripe grain over to be the spoil of 
the enemy. Standing beside him was his wife, still a young 
woman, holding in her arms a child, while another was hang- 
ing by her skirts ; all three were weeping bitterly. Suddenly 
the door was thrown open with violence and in its enframe- 
ment appeared the grandmother, a very old woman, tall and 
lean of form, with bare, sinewy arms like knotted cords that 
she raised above her head and shook with frantic gestures. 
Her gray, scanty locks had escaped from her cap and were 
floating about her skinny face, and such was her fury that the 
words she shouted choked her utterance and came from her 
lips almost unintelligible. 

At first the soldiers had laughed. Wasn’t she a beauty, the 
old crazy hag ! Then words reached their ears ; the old 
woman was screaming : 

“ Scum ! Robbers ! Cowards ! Cowards ! ” 

With a voice that rose shriller and more piercing still she 
kept lashing them with her tongue, expectorating insult on 
them, and taunting them for dastards with the full force of 
her lungs. And the laughter ceased, it seemed as if a cold 
wind had blown over the ranks. The men hung their heads, 
looked any way save that. 


3 ^ 


THE downfall 


“ Cowards ! Cowards ! Cowards ! ” 

Then all at once her stature seemed to dilate ; she drew 
herself up, tragic in her leanness, in her poor old apology for 
a gown, and sweeping the heavens with her long arm from 
west to east, with a gesture so broad that it seemed to fill the 
dome : 

“ Cowards, the Rhine is not there ! The Rhine lies yonder ! 
Cowards, cowards ! ” 

They got under way again at last, and Maurice, whose look 
just then encountered Jean’s, saw that the latter’s eyes were 
filled with tears, and it did not alleviate his distress to think 
that those rough soldiers, compelled to swallow an insult that 
they had done nothing to deserve, were shamed by it. He 
was conscious of nothing save the intolerable aching in his 
poor head, and in after days could never remember how the 
march of that day ended, prostrated as he was by his terrible 
suffering, mental and physical. 

The 7th corps had spent the entire day in getting over the 
fourteen or fifteen miles between Dannemarie and Belfort, 
and it was night again before the troops got settled in their 
bivouacs under the walls of the town, in the very same place 
whence they had started four days before to march against the 
enemy. Notwithstanding the lateness of the*hour and their 
spent condition, the men insisted on lighting fires and making 
soup ; it was the first time since their departure that they had 
had an opportunity to put warm food into their stomachs, and 
seated about the cheerful blaze in the cool air of evening they 
were dipping their noses in the porringers and grunting inar- 
ticulately in token of satisfaction when news came in that burst 
upon the camp like a thunderbolt, dumfoundering everyone. 
Two telegrams had just been received : the Prussians had not 
crossed the Rhine at Markolsheim, and there was not a single 
Pru.ssian at Huningue. The passage of the Rhine at Markols- 
heim and the bridge of boats constructed under the electric 
light had existed merely in imagination, were an unexplained, 
inexplicable nightmare of the prefet at Schelestadt ; and as for 
the army corps that had menaced Huningue, that famous 
corps of the Black Forest, that had made so much talk, it was 
but an insignificant detachment of Wurtemburgers, a couple 
of battalions of infantry and a squadron of cavalry, which had 
maneuvered with such address, marching and countermarch- 
ing, appearing in one place and then suddenly popping up in 
another at a distance, as to gain for themselves the reputation 


THE DOWNFALL 


39 


of being thirty or forty thousand strong. And to think that 
that morning they had been near blowing up the viaduct at 
Dannemarie ! Twenty leagues of fertile country had been 
depopulated by the most idiotic of panics, and at the recol- 
lection of what they had seen during their lamentable day’s 
march, the inhabitants flying in consternation to the moun- 
tains, driving their cattle before them ; the press of vehicles 
laden with household effects, streaming cityward and sur- 
rounded by bands of weeping women and children, the sol- 
diers waxed wroth and gave way to bitter, sneering denuncia- 
tion of their leaders. 

“Ah ! it is too ridiculous fo talk about ! ’’ sputtered Lou- 
bet, not stopping to empty his mouth, brandishing his spoon. 
“ They take us out to fight the enemy, and there’s not a soul 
to fight with ! Twelve leagues there and twelve leagues 
back, and not so much as a mouse in front of us ! All that 
for nothing, just for the fun of being scared to death ! ’’ 

Chouteau, who was noisily absorbing the last drops in his 
porringer- bellowed his opinion of the generals, without men- 
tioning names : 

“ The pigs ! what miserable boobies they are, hein / A 
pretty pack of dunghill-cocks the government has given us as 
commanders ! Wonder what they would do if they had an 
army actually before them, if they show the white feather this 

way when there’s not a Prussian in sight, hein! Ah no, not 

any of it in mine, thank you ; soldiers don’t obey such pigeon- 
livered gentlemen.” 

Someone had thrown another armful of wood on the fire 
for the pleasurable sensation of comfort there was in the 
bright, dancing flame, and Lapoulle, who was engaged in the 
luxurious occupation of toasting his shins, suddenly went off 
into an imbecile fit of laughter without in the least under- 
standing what it was about, whereon Jean, who had thus far 
turned a deaf ear to their talk, thought -it time to interfere, 
which he did by saying in a fatherly way : 

“ You had better hold your tongue, you fellows ! It might 
be the worse for you if anyone should hear you.” 

He himself, in his untutored, common-sense way of viewing 
things, was exasperated by the stupid incompetency of their 
commanders, but then discipline must be maintained, and as 
Chouteau still kept up a low muttering he cut him short : 

“ Be silent, I say ! Here is the lieutenant ; address youp 
self to him if you have anything to say,” 


40 


THE DOWNFALL 


Maurice had listened in silence to the conversation from his 
place a little to one side. Ah, truly, the end was near ! 
Scarcely had they made a beginning, and all was over. I'hat 
lack of discipline, that seditious spirit among the men at the 
very first reverse, had already made the army a demoralized, 
disintegrated rabble that would melt away at the first indica- 
tion of catastrophe. There they were, under the walls of 
Belfort, without having sighted a Prussian, and they were 
whipped. 

The succeeding days were a period of monotony, full of un- 
certainty and anxious forebodings. To keep his troops occu- 
pied General Douay set them to work on the defenses of the 
place, which were in a state of incompleteness ; there was 
great throwing up of earth and cutting through rock. And 
not the first item of news! Where was MacMahon’s army? 
What was going on at Metz? The wildest rumors were cur- 
rent, and the Parisian journals, by their system of printing 
news only to contradict it the next day, kept the country in 
an agony of suspense. Twice, it was said, the general had 
written and asked for instructions, and had not even received 
an answer. On the 12th of August, however, the 7th corps 
was augmented by the 3d division, which landed from Italy, 
but there were still only two divisions for duty, for the ist 
had participated in the defeat at Froesch wilier, had been 
swept away in the general rout, and as yet no one had learned 
where it had been stranded by the current. After a week of 
this abandonment, of this entire separation from the rest of 
France, a telegram came bringing them the order to march. 
The news was well received, for anything was preferable to 
the prison life they were leading in Belfort. And while they 
were getting themselves in readiness conjecture and surmise 
were the order of the day, for no one as yet knew what their 
destination was to be, some saying that they were to be sent 
to the defense of Strasbourg, while others spoke with con- 
fidence of a bold dash into the Black Forest that was to sever 
the Prussian line of communication. 

Early the next morning the io6th was bundled into cattle- 
cars and started off among the first. The car that contained 
Jean’s squad was particularly crowded, so much so that Loubet 
declared there was not even room in it to sneeze. It was a 
load of humanity, sent off to the war just as a load of sacks 
would have been dispatched to the mill, crowded in so as to 
get the greatest number into the smallest space, and as rations 


THE DOWNFALL 


41 


had been given out in the usual hurried, slovenly manner and 
the men had received in brandy what they should have re- 
ceived in food, the consequence was that they were all roaring 
drunk, with a drunkenness that vented itself in obscene songs, 
varied by shrieks and yells. The heavy train rolled slowly 
onward ; pipes were alight and men could no longer see one 
another through the dense clouds of smoke ; the heat and 
odor that emanated from that mass of perspiring human flesh 
were unendurable, while from the jolting, dingy van came 
volleys of shouts and laughter that drowned the monotonous 
rattle of the wheels and were lost amid the silence of the de- 
serted fields. And it was not until they reached Langres that 
the troops learned that they were being carried back to 
Paris. 

“ Ah, nom de Dieii / ” exclaimed Chouteau, who already, by 
virtue of his oratorical ability, was the acknowledged sovereign 
of his corner, they will station us at Charentonneau, sure, to 
keep old Bismarck out of the Tuileries.” 

The others laughed loud and long, considering the joke a 
very good one, though no one could say why. The most 
trivial incidents of the journey, however, served to elicit a 
storm of yells, cat -calls, and laughter : a group of peasants 
standing beside the roadway, or the anxious faces of the peo- 
ple who hung about the way-stations in the hope of picking up 
some bits of news from the passing trains, epitomizing on a 
small scale the breathless, shuddering alarm that pervaded all 
, France in the presence of invasion. And so it happened that 
as the train thundered by, a fleeting vision of pandemonium, 
all that the good burghers obtained in the way of intelligence 
was the salutations of that cargo of food for powder as it 
hurried onward to its destination, fast as steam could carry it. 
At a station where they stopped, however, three well-dressed 
ladies, wealthy bourgeoises of the town, who distributed cups of 
bouillon among the men, were received with great respect. 
Some of the soldiers shed tears, and kissed their hands as they 
thanked them. 

But as soon as they were under way again the filthy songs 
and the wild shouts began afresh, and so it went on until, a 
little while after leaving Chaumont, they met another train 
that was conveying some batteries of artillery to Metz. The 
locomotives slowed down and the soldiers in the two trains 
fraternized with a frightful uproar. Tlie artillerymen were 
also apparently very^ drunk ; they stood up in their seats, and 


42 


THE DO WNFALL . 


thrusting hands and arms out of the car-windows, gave this 
cry with a vehemence that silenced every other sound : 

“ To the slaughter ! to the slaughter ! to the slaughter ! ” 

It was iis if a cold wind, a blast from the charnel-house, had 
swept through the car. Amid the sudden silence that de- 
scended on them Loubet’s irreverent voice was heard, shout- 
ing : 

“ Not very cheerful companions, those fellows ! ” 

“But they are right,” rejoined Chouteau, as if addressing 
some pot-house assemblage ; “ it is a beastly thing to send a 
lot of brave boys to have their brains blown out for a dirty 
little quarrel about which they don’t know the first word.” 

And much more in the same strain. He was the type of 
the Belleville agitator, a lazy, dissipated mechanic, perverting 
his fellow workmen, constantly spouting the ill-digested odds 
and ends of political harangues that he had heard, belching 
forth in the same breath the loftiest sentiments and the most 
asinine revolutionary clap-trap. He knew it all, and tried to 
inoculate his comrades with his ideas, especially Lapoulle, of 
whom he had promised to make a lad of spirit. 

“Don’t you see, old man, it’s all perfectly simple. If 
Badinguet and Bismarck have a quarrel, let ’em go to work 
with their fists and fight it out and not involve in their row 
some hundreds of thousands of men who don’t even know 
one another by sight and have not the slightest desire to 
fight.” 

The whole car laughed and applauded, and Lapoulle, who 
did not know who Badinguet* was, and could not have told 
whether it was a king or an emperor in whose cause he was 
fighting, repeated like the gigantic baby that he was : 

“ Of course; let ’em fight it out, and take a drink together 
afterward.” 

But Chouteau had turned to Pache, whom he now proceeded 
to take in hand. 

“ You are in the same boat, 3mu, who pretend to believe 
in the good God. He has forbidden men to fight, your 
good God has. Why, then, are you here, you great simple- 
ton ? ” 

“ Dame !" Pache doubtfully replied, “it is not for any plea- 
sure of mine that I am here — but the gendarmes ” 

“ Oh, indeed, the gendarmes ! let the gendarmes go milk the 
ducks ! — say, do you know what we would do, all of us, if we 
thQ l^ast bit of spirit ? I’ll tell you ; just the iqinute that 
^ N^pol^on m, 


THE DOWNFALL 


43 


they land us from the cars we’d skip ; yes, we’d go straight 
home, and leave that pig of a Badinguet and his gang of two- 
for-a-penny generals to settle accounts with their beastly 
Prussians as best they may ! ” 

'I'here was a storm of bravos ; the leaven of perversion was 
doing its work and it was Chouteau’s hour of triumph, airing 
his muddled theories and ringing the changes on the Republic, 
the Rights of Man, the rottenness of the Empire, which must 
be destroyed, and the treason of their commanders, who, as it 
had been proved, had sold themselves to the enemy at the 
rate of a million a piece. He was a revolutionist, he boldly 
declared ; the others could not even say that they were re- 
publicans, did not know what their opinions were, in fact, 
except Loubet, the concocter of stews and hashes, and he had 
an opinion, for he had been for soup, first, last, and always ; but 
they all, carried away by his eloquence, shouted none the less 
lustily against the Emperor, their officers, the whole d — d shop, 
which they would leave the first chance they got, see if they 
wouldn’t ! And Chouteau, while fanning the flame of their 
discontent, kept an eye on Maurice, the fine gentleman, who 
appeared interested and whom he was proud to have for a 
companion ; so that, by way of inflaming his passions also, it 
occurred to him to make an attack on Jean, who had thus far 
been tranquilly watching the proceedings out of his half- 
closed eyes, unmoved among the general uproar. If there 
was any remnant of resentment in the bosom of the volunteer 
sinc'e the time when the corporal had inflicted such a bitter 
humiliation on him by forcing him to resume his abandoned 
musket, now was a fine chance to set the two men by the 
ears. 

“ I know some folks who talk of shooting us,” Chouteau 
continued, with an ugly look at Jean; “dirty, miserable 
skunks, who treat us worse than beasts, and, when a man’s 
back is broken with the weight of his knapsack and Brown- 
bess, aie ! ate ! object to his planting them in the fields to see 
if a new crop will grow from them. What do you suppose 
they would say, comrades, hein ! now that we are masters, if 
we should pitch them all out upon the track, and teach them 
better manners? That’s the way to do, hein! We’ll show 
’em that we won’t be bothered any longer with their mangy 
wars. Down with Badinguet’s bed-bugs ! Death to the curs 
who want to make us fight ! ” 

Jean’s face was aflame with the crimson tide that never 


44 


THE DOWNFALL 


failed to rush to his cheeks in his infrequent fits of anger. He 
rose, wedged in though as he was between his neighbors as 
firmly as in a vise, and his blazing eyes and doubled fists had 
such a look of business about them that the other quailed. 

Totmerre de Dieii ! will you be silent, pig ! For hours I 
have sat here without saying anything, because we have no 
longer any leaders, and I could not even send you to the 
guard-house. Yes, there’s no doubt of it, it would ’be a good 
thing to shoot such men as you and rid the regiment of the 
vermin. But see here, as there’s no longer any discipline, 1 
will attend to your case myself. There’s no corporal here 
now, but a hard-fisted fellow who is tired. of listening to your 
jaw, and he’ll see if he can’t make you keep your potato-trap 
shut. Ah ! you d — d coward ! You won’t fight yourself and 
you want to keep others from fighting ! Repeat your words 
once and I’ll knock your head off ! ” 

By this time the whole car, won over by Jean’s manly atti- 
tude, had deserted Chouteau, who cowered back in his seat as 
if not anxious to face his opponent’s big fists. 

“ And I care no more for Badinguet than I do for you, do 
you understand ? I despise politics, whether they are repub- 
lican or imperial, and now, as in the past, when I used to cul- 
tivate my little farm, there is but one thing that I wish for, 
and that is the happiness of all, peace and good-order, free- 
dom for every man to attend to his affairs. No one denies 
that war is a terrible business, but that is no reason why a man 
should not be treated to the sight of a firing-party when he 
comes trying to dishearten people who already have enough 
to do to keep their courage up. Good Heavens, friends, how 
it makes a man’s pulses leap to be told that the Prussians are 
in the land and that he is to go help drive them out ! ” 

Then, with the customary fickleness of a mob, the soldiers 
applauded the corporal, who again announced his determina- 
tion to thrash the first man of his squad who should declare 
non-combatant principles. Bravo, the corporal ! they would 
soon settle old Bismarck’s hash ! And, in the midst of the 
wild ovation of which he was the object, Jean, who had re- 
covered his self-control, turned politely to Maurice and 
addressed him as if he had not been one of his men ; 

“ Monsieur, you cannot have anything in common with 
those poltroons. Come, we haven’t had a chance at them yet ; 
we are the boys who will give them a good basting yet, those 
Prussians ! ” 


THE DOWNFALL 


45 


It seemed to Maurice at that moment as if a ray of cheering 
sunshine had penetrated his heart. He was humiliated, vexed 
with himself. What ! that man was nothing more than an 
uneducated rustic ! And he remembered the fierce hatred 
that had burned in his bosom the day he was compelled to 
pick up the musket that he had thrown away in a moment of 
madness. But he also remembered his emotion at seeing the 
two big tears that stood in the corporal’s eyes when the old 
grandmother, her gray hairs streaming in the wind, had so 
bitterly reproached them and pointed to the Rhine that lay 
beneath the horizon in the distance. Was it the brotherhood 
of fatigue and suffering endured in common that had served 
thus to dissipate his wrathful feelings ? He was Bonapartist 
by birth, and had never thought of the Republic except in a 
speculative, dreamy way; his feeling toward the Emperor, 
personall}", too, inclined to friendliness, and he was favorable 
to the war, the very condition of national existence, the great 
regenerative school of nationalities. Hope, all at once, with 
one of those fitful impulses of the imagination that were com- 
mon in his temperament, revived in him, while the enthusiastic 
ardor that had impelled him to enlist one night again surged 
through his veins and swelled his heart with confidence of 
victory. 

“ Why, of course, CorpQral,” he gayly replied, “ we shall give 
them a basting ! ” 

And still the car kept rolling onward with its load of human 
freight, filled with reeking smoke of pipes and emanations of 
the crowded men, belching its ribald songs and drunken shouts 
among the expectant throngs of the stations through which it 
passed, among the rows of white-faced peasants who lined the 
iron-wa}^ On the 20th of August they were at the P^ntin 
Station in Paris, and that same evening boarded another train 
which landed them next day at Rheims en route for the camp 
at Chalons. 


III. 

M aurice was greatly surprised when the io 6 th, leaving 
the cars at Rheims, received orders to go into camp 
there. So they were not to go to Chalons, then, and 
unite with the army there ? And when, two hours later, his 
regiment had stagked muskets a league or so from the city 


46 


THE DO WNFALL 


over in the direction of Courcelles, in the broad plain that lies 
along the canal between the Aisne and Marne, his astonish- 
ment was greater still to learn that the entire army of Chalons 
had been falling back all that morning and was about to 
bivoLUic at that place. From one extremity of the horizon to 
the other, as far as Saint Thierry and Menvillette, even 
beyond the Laon road, the tents were going up, and when it 
should be night the fires of four army-corps would be blazing 
there. It was evident that the plan now was to go and take a 
position under the walls of Paris and there await the Prus- 
sians ; and it was fortunate that that plan had received the 
approbation of the government, for was it not the wisest thing 
they could do ? 

Maurice devoted the afternoon of the 21st to strolling about 
the camp in search of news. The greatest freedom prevailed ; 
discipline appeared to have been relaxed still further, the men 
went and came at their own sweet will. He found no obstacle 
in the way of his return to the city, where he desired to cash a 
money-order for a hundred francs that his sister Flenriette'had 
sent him. While in a cafe he heard a sergeant telling of the 
disaffection that existed in the eighteen battalions of the garde 
mobile of the Seine, which had just been sent back to Paris ; 
the 6th battalion had been near killing their officers. Not a 
day passed at the camp that the generals were not insulted, 
and since Froeschwiller the soldiers had ceased to give Marshal 
MacMahon the military salute. The cafe resounded with the 
sound of voices in excited conversation ; a violent dispute 
arose between two sedate burghers in respect to the number 
of men that MacMahon would have at his disposal. One of 
them made the wild assertion that there would be three hun- 
dred thousand ; the other, who seemed to be more at home 
upon the subject, stated the strength of the four corps : the 
i2th, which had just been made complete at the camp with 
great difficulty with the assistance of provisional regiments 
and a division of infanterie de marine ; the ist, which had been 
coming straggling in in fragments ever since the 14th of the 
month and of which they were doing what they could to perfect 
the organization ; the 5th, defeated before it had ever fought 
a battle, swept away and broken up in the general panic, and 
finally, the 7th, then landing from the cars, demoralized like 
all the rest and minus its ist division, of which it had just 
recovered the remains at Rheims ; in all, one hundred and 
twenty thousand at the outside, including the cavalry, Bou- 


The downfall 


M 


nemaln’s and Margueritte’s divisions. When the sergeant 
took a hand in the quarrel, liowever, speaking of the army in 
terms of the utmost contempt, characterizing it as a ruffianly 
rabble, with no esprit de corps, with nothing to keep it to- 
gether, — a pack of greenhorns with idiots to conduct them, 
to the slaughter, — the two bourgeois began to be uneasy, 
and fearing there might be trouble brewing, made themselves 
scarce. 

When outside upon the street Maurice hailed a newsboy 
and purchased a copy of every paper he could lay hands on, 
stuffing some in his pockets and reading others as he walked 
along under the stately trees that line the pleasant avenues of 
the old city. Where could the German armies be ? It seemed 
as if obscurity had suddenly swallowed them up. Two were 
over Metz way, of course: the first, the one commanded by 
General von Steinmetz, observing the place; the second, that 
of Prince Frederick Charles, aiming to ascend the right bank 
of the Moselle in order to cut Bazaine off from Paris. But the 
third army, that of the Crown Prince of Prussia, the army that 
had been victorious at Wissembourg and Froeschwiller and 
had driven our ist and 5th corps, where was it now, where 
was it to be located amid the tangled mess of contradictory 
advices? Was it still in camp at Nancy, or was it true that it 
had arrived before Chalons, and was that the reason why we 
had abandoned our camp there in such hot haste, burning our 
stores, clothing, forage, provisions, everything — property of 
which the value to the nation was beyond compute ? And 
when the different plans with which our generals were credited 
came to be taken into consideration, then there was more con- 
fusion, a fresh set of contradictory hypotheses to be encoun- 
tered. Maurice had until now been cut off in a measure from 
the outside world, and now for the first time learned what had 
been the course of events in Paris; the blasting effect of 
defeat upon a populace that had been confident of victory, the 
terrible commotions in the streets, the convoking of the Cham- 
bers, the fall of the liberal ministry that had effected the ple- 
biscite, the abrogation of the Emperor’s rank as General of the 
Army and the transfer of the supreme command to Marshal 
Bazaine. The Emperor had been present at the camp of 
Chalons since the i6th, and all the newspapers were filled 
with a grand council that had been held on the 17th, at which 
Prince Napoleon and some of the generals were present, but 
none of them were agreed upon the decisions that had been 


48 


THE DOWNFALL 


arrived at outside of the resistant facts, which were that 
General Trochu had been appointed governor of Paris and 
Marshal MacMahon given the command of the army of 
Chalons, and the inference from this was that the Emperor was 
to be shorn of all his authority. Consternation, irresolution, 
conflicting plans that were laid aside and replaced by fresh 
ones hour by hour ; these were the things that everybody felt 
were in the air. And ever and always the 'question : Where 
were the German armies ? Who were in the right, those who 
asserted that Bazaine had no force worth mentioning in front of 
him and was free to make his retreat through the towns of the 
north whenever he chose to do so, or those who declared that 
he was already besieged in Metz? There was a constantly 
recurring rumor of a series of engagements that had raged 
during an entire week, from the 14th until the 20th, but it 
failed to receive confirmation. 

Maurice’s legs ached with fatigue; he went and sat down upon 
a bench. Around him the life of the city seemed to be going 
on as usual ; there were nursemaids seated in the shade of 
the handsome trees watching the sports of their little charges, 
small property owners strolled leisurely about the walks 
enjoying their daily constitutional. He had taken up his papers 
again, when his eyes lighted on an article that had escaped 
his notice, the “leader” in a rabid republican sheet ; then 
everything was made clear to him. The paper stated that at 
the council of the 17th at the camp of Chalons the retreat of 
the army on Paris had been fully decided on, and that General 
Trochu’s appointment to the command of the city had no 
other object than to facilitate the Emperor’s return ; but those 
resolutions, the journal went on to say, were rendered una- 
vailing by the attitude of the Empress-regent and the new 
ministry. It was the Empress’s opinion that the Emperor’s 
return would certainly produce a revolution ; she was reported 
to have said: “ He will never reach the Tuileries alive.” 
Starting with these premises she insisted with the utmost 
urgency that the army should advance, at every risk, whatever 
might be the cost of human life, and effect a junction with the 
army of Metz, in which course she was supported moreover 
by General de Palikao, the Minister of War, who had a plan 
of his own for reaching Bazaine by a rapid and victorious 
march. And Maurice, letting his paper fall from his hand, 
his eyes bent on space, believed that he now had the key to 
the entire mystery ; the two conflicting plans, MacMahon’s 


THE DOWNFALL 


49 


hesitation to undertake that dangerous flank movement with 
the unreliable army at his command, the impatient orders that 
came to him from Paris, each more tart and imperative than 
its predecessor, urging him on to that mad, desperate enter- 
prise. Then, as the central figure in that tragic conflict, the 
vision of the Emperor suddenly rose distinctly before his inner 
eyes, deprived of his imperial authority, which he had com- 
mitted to the hands of the Empress-regent, stripped of his mili- 
tary command, which he had conferred on Marshal Bazaine ; 
a nullity, the Vague and unsubstantial shadow of an emperor, a 
nameless, cumbersome nonentity whom no one knew what to do 
with, whom Paris rejected and who had ceased to have a posi- 
tion in the army, for he had pledged himself to issue no 
further orders. 

The next morning, however, after a rainy night through 
which he slept outside his tent on the bare ground, wrapped 
in his rubber blanket, Maurice was cheered by the tidings 
that the retreat on Paris had finally carried the day. Another 
council had been held during the night, it was said, at which 
M. Rouher, the former vice-Emperor, had been present ; he 
had been sent by the Empress to accelerate the movement to- 
ward Verdun, and it would seem that the marshal had succeeded 
in convincing him of the rashness of such an undertaking. Were 
there unfavorable tidings from Bazaine ? no one could say for 
certain. But the absence of news was itself a circumstance of 
evil omen, and all among the most influential of the generals 
had cast their vote for the march on Paris, for which they 
would be the relieving army. And Maurice, happy in the 
conviction that the retrograde movement would commence 
not later than the morrow, since the orders for it were said to 
be already issued, thought he would gratify a boyish longing 
that had been troubling him for some time past, to give the 
go-by for one day to soldier’s fare, to wit, and eat his break- 
fast off a cloth, with the accompaniment of plate, knife and 
fork, carafe, and a bottle of good wine, things of which it 
seemed to him that he had been deprive for months and 
months. He had money in his pocket, so off he started 
with quickened pulse, as if going out for a lark, to search for 
a place of entertainment. 

It was just at the entrance of the village of Courcelles, 
across the canal, that he found the breakfast for which his 
mouth was watering. He had been told the day before that 
the Emperor had taken up his quarters in one of the houses of 


THE DOWNFALL 


5<5 

the village, and liaving gone to stroll there out of curiosity, now 
remembered to have seen at the junction of the two roads this 
little inn with its arbor, the trellises of which were loaded 
with big clusters of ripe, golden, luscious grapes. There was 
an array of green-painted tables set out in the shade of the 
luxuriant vine, while through the open door of the vast 
kitchen he had caught glimpses of the antique clock, the 
colored prints pasted on the walls, and the comfortable land- 
lady watching the revolving spit. It was cheerful, smiling, 
hospitable ; a regular type of the good old-fashioned French 
hostelry. 

A pretty, white-necked waitress came up and asked him 
with a great display of flashing teeth : 

“ Will monsieur have breakfast ? ” 

“ Of course I will ! Give me some eggs, a cutlet, and 
cheese. And a bottle of white wine ! ” 

She turned to go ; he called her back. “ Tell me, is it not 
in one of those houses that the Emperor has his quarters ? ” 

“ There, monsieur, in that one right before you. Only you 
can’t see it, for it is concealed by the high wall with the over- 
hanging trees.” 

He loosed his belt so as to be more at ease in his capote, 
and entering the arbor, chose his table, on which the sunlight, 
finding its way here and there through the green canopy 
above, danced in little golden spangles. And constantly his 
thoughts kept returning to that high wall behind which was 
the Emperor. A most mysterious house it was, indeed, 
shrinking from the public gaze, even its slated roof invisible. 
Its entrance was on the other side, upon the village street, a 
narrow winding street between dead-walls, without a shop, 
without even a window to enliven it. 7'he small garden in 
the rear, among the sparse dwellings that environed it, was 
like an island of dense verdure. And across the road he 
noticed a spacious courtyard, surrounded by sheds and 
stables, crowded with a countless train of carriages and bag- 
gage-wagons, among which men and horses, coming and 
going, kept up an unceasing bustle. 

“ Are those all for the service of the Emperor ? ” he in- 
quired, meaning to say something humorous to the girl, who 
was laying a snow-white cloth upon the table. 

“Yes, for the Emperor himself, and no one else!” she 
pleasantly replied, glad of a chance to show her white teeth 
once more ; and then she went on to enumerate the suite from 


THE DOWNFALL 


51 


information that she had probably received from the stable- 
men, who had been coming to the inn to drink since the pre- 
ceding day; there were the staff, comprising twenty-five 
officers, the sixty cent-gardes and the half-troop of guides for 
escort duty, the six gendarmes of the provost-guard ; then the 
household, seventy-three persons in all, chamberlains, attend- 
ants for the table and the bedroom, cooks and scullions ; then 
four saddle-horses and two carriages for the Emperor’s per- 
sonal use, ten horses for the equerries, eight for the grooms 
and outriders, not mentioning forty-seven post-horses ; then a 
char a banc and twelve baggage wagons, two of which, appro- 
priated to the cooks, had particularly excited her admiration 
by reason of the number and variety of the utensils they con- 
tained, all in the most splendid order. 

“ Oh, sir, you never saw such stew-pans ! they shone like 
silver. And all sorts of dishes, and jars and jugs, and lots of 
things of which it would puzzle me to tell the use ! And a 
cellar of wine, claret, burgundy, and champagne — yes ! enough 
to supply a wedding feast.” 

The unusual luxury of the snowy table-cloth and the white 
wine sparkling in his glass sharpened Maurice’s appetite ; he 
devoured his two poached eggs with a zest that made him fear 
he was developing epicurean tastes. When he turned to the 
left and looked out through the entrance of the leafy arbor he 
had before him the spacious plain, covered with long rows of 
tents : a busy, populous city that had risen like an exhalation 
from the stubble-fields between Rheinis city and the canal. 
A few clumps of stunted trees, three wind-mills lifting their 
skeleton arms in the air, were all there was to relieve the 
monotony of the gray waste, but above the huddled roofs of 
Rheims, lost in the sea of foliage of the tall chestnut-trees, the 
huge bulk of the cathedral with its slender spires was pro- 
filed against the blue sky, looming colossal, notwithstanding 
the distance, beside the modest houses. Memories of school 
and boyhood’s days came over him, the tasks he had learned 
and recited : all about the sacre of our kings, the sainte 
ampoule^ Clovis, Jeanne d’Arc, all the long list of glories of old 
France. 

d’lien Maurice’s thoughts reverted again to that unassuming 
boLirgeoise house, so mysterious in its solitude, and its imperial 
occupant ; and directing his eyes upon the high, yellow wall 
he was surprised to read, scrawled there in great, awkward 
letters, the legend : Vive Napoleon! among the meaningless 


52 


THE DOWNFALL 


obscenities traced by schoolboys. Winter’s storms and 
summer’s sun had half effaced the lettering ; evidently the in- 
scription was very ancient. How strange, to see upon that 
wall that old heroic battle-cry, which probably had been placed 
there in honor of the uncle, not of the nephew ! It brought 
all his childhood back to him, and Maurice was again a boy, 
scarcely out of his mother’s arms, down there in distant Chene- 
Populeux, listening to the stories of his grandfather, a veteran 
of the Grand Army. His mother was dead, his father, in the 
inglorious days that followed the collapse of the emi^ire, had 
been compelled to accept a humble position as collector, and 
there the grandfather lived, with nothing to support him save 
his scanty pension, in the poor home of the small public func- 
tionary, his sole comfort to fight his battles o’er again for the 
benefit of his two little twin grandchildren, the boy and the 
girl, a pair of golden-haired youngsters to whom he was in 
some sense a mother. He would place Maurice on his right 
knee and Henriette on his left, and then for hours on end the 
narrative would run on in Homeric strain. 

But small attention was paid to dates ; his story was of the 
dire shock of conflicting nations, and was not to be hampered 
by the minute exactitude of the historian. Successively or 
together English, Austrians, Prussians, Russians appeared 
upon the scene, according to the then prevailing condition' of 
the ever-changing alliances, and it was not always an easy 
matter to tell why one nation received a beating in preference 
to another, but beaten they all were in the end, inevitably 
beaten from the very commencement, in a whirlwind of genius 
and heroic daring that swept great armies like chaff from off 
the earth. There was Marengo, the classic battle of the plain, 
with the (J^onsLimmate generalship of its broad plan and the 
faultless retreat of the battalions by squares, silent and im- 
passive under the enemy’s terrible fire ; the battle, famous in 
story, lost at three o’clock and won at six, where the eight 
hundred grenadiers of the Consular Guard withstood the 
onset of the entire Austrian cavalry, where Desaix arrived 
to change impending defeat to glorious victory and die. 
There was Austerlitz, with its sun of glory shining forth from 
amid the wintry sky, Austerlitz, commencing with the capture 
of the plateau of Pratzen and ending with the frightful catas- 
trophe on the frozen lake, where an entire Russian corps, men, 
guns, horses, went crashing through the ice, while Napoleon, 
who in his divine omniscience had foreseen it all, of course, 


THE DOWNFALL 


53 


directed his artillery to play upon the struggling mass. There 
was Jena, where so many of Prussia’s bravest found a grave ; 
at first the red flames of musketry flashing through the Octo- 
ber mists, and Ney’s impatience, near spoiling all until Auger- 
eau comes wheeling into line and saves him ; the fierce 
charge that tore the enemy’s center in twain, and finally 
panic, the headlong rout of their boasted cavalry, whom our 
hussars mow down like ripened grain, strewing the romantic 
glen with a harvest of men and horses. And Eylau, cruel 
Eylau, bloodiest battle of them all, where the maimed corpses 
cumbered the earth in piles ; Eylau, whose new-fallen snow 
was stained with blood, the burial-place of heroes ; Eylau, in 
whose name reverberates still the thunder of the charge of 
Murat’s eighty squadrons, piercing the Russian lines in every 
direction, heaping the ground so thick with dead that Napoleon 
himself could not refrain from tears. Then Friedland, the 
trap into which the Russians again allowed themselves to be 
decoyed like a flock of brainless sparrows, the masterpiece of 
the Emperor’s consummate strategy ; our left held back as in a 
leash, motionless, without a sign of life, while Ney was carrying 
the city, street by street, and destroying the bridges, then the 
left hurled like a thunderbolt on the enemy’s right, driving it 
into the river and annihilating it in that cul-de-sac; the slaughter 
so great that at ten o’clock at night the bloody work was not 
completed, most wonderful of all the successes of the great 
imperial epic. And Wagram, where it was the aim of the 
Austrians to cut us off from the Danube ; they keep strength- 
ening their left in order to overwhelm Massena, who is 
wounded and issues his orders from an open carriage, and 
Napoleon, like a malicious Titan, lets them go on unchecked ; 
then all at once a hundred guns vomit their terrible fire upon 
their weakened center, driving it backward more than a league, 
and their left, terror-stricken to find itself unsupported, gives 
way before the again victorious Massena, sweeping away 
before it the remainder of the army, as when a broken dike 
lets loose its torrents upon the fields. And finally the 
Moskowa, where the bright sun of Austerjitz shone for the 
last time ; where the contending hosts were mingled in con- 
fused melee amid deeds of the most desperate daring : mame- 
lons carried under an unceasing fire of musketry, redoubts 
stormed with the naked steel, every inch of ground fought over 
again and again ; such determined resistance on the part of the 
Russian Guards that our final victory was only assured by 


54 


THE DOWNFALL 


Murat’s mad charges, the concentrated fire of our three hun- 
dred pieces of artillery, and the valor of Ney, who was the 
hero of that most obstinate of conflicts. And be the battle 
what it might, ever our flags floated proudly on the evening- 
air, and as the bivouac fires were lighted on the conquered 
field out rang the old battle-cry: Vive Napoleon! France, 
carrying her invincible Eagles from end to end of Europe, 
seemed everywhere at home, having but to raise her finger to 
make her will respected by the nations, mistress of a world 
that in vain conspired to crush her and upon which she set 
her foot. 

Maurice was contentedly finishing his cutlet, cheered not so 
much by the wine that sparkled in his glass as by the glorious 
memories that were teeming in his brain, when his glance 
encountered two ragged, dust-stained soldiers, less like soldiers 
than weary tramps just off the road ; they were asking the 
attendant for information as to the position of the regiments 
that were encamped along the canal. He hailed them. 

“ Hallo there, comrades, this way ! You are yth corps men, 
aren’t you ? ” 

“Right you are, sir ; ist division — at least I am, more by 
token that 1 was at Froesch wilier, where it was warm enough, 
I can tell you. The comrade, here, belongs in the I'St corps ; 
he was at Wissembourg, another beastly hole.” 

They told their story, how they had been swept away in the 
general panic, had crawled into a ditch half-dead with fatigue 
and hunger, each of them slightly wounded, and since then 
had been dragging themselves along in the rear of the army, 
compelled to lie over in towns when the fever-fits came on, 
until at last they had reached the camp and were on the look- 
out to find their regiments. 

Maurice, who had a piece of Gruyere before him, noticed 
the hungry eyes fixed on his plate. 

“ Hi there, mademoiselle ! bring some more cheese, will 
you — and bread and wine. You will join me, won’t you, 
comrades ? It is my treat. Here’s to your good health ! ” 

They drew their chairs up to the table, only too delighted 
with the invitation. Their entertainer watched them as they 
attacked the food, and a thrill of pity r^n through him as he 
beheld their sorry plight, dirty, ragged, arms gone, their sole 
attire a pair of red trousers and the capote, kept in place by 
bits of twine and so patched and pieced with shreds of vari- 
colored cloth that one would huve taken them for men who 


THE DOWNFALL 55 

had been looting some battle-field and were wearing the spoil 
they had gathered there. 

“ Ah ! /outre, yes ! ” continued the taller of the two as he 
plied his jaws, “ it was no laughing matter there ! You 
ought to have seen it, — tell him how it was, Coutard.” 

And the little man told his story with many gestures, describ- 
ing figures on the air with his bread. 

“ I was washing my shirt, you see, while the rest. of them 
were making soup. Just try and picture to yourself a misera- 
ble hole, a regular trap, all surrounded by dense woods that 
gave those Prussian pigs a chance to crawl up to us before we 
ever suspected they were there. So, then, about seven o’clock 
the shells begin to come tumbling about our ears. Noin de 
Dieu ! but it was lively work ! we jumped for our shooting- 
irons, and up to eleven o’clock it looked as if we were going to 
polish ’em off in fine style. But you mustknowthat there were 
only five thousand of us, and the beggars kept coming, coming 
as if there was no end to them. I was posted on a little hill, 
behind a bush, and I could see them debouching in front, to 
right, to left, like rows of black ants swarming from their hill, 
and when you thought there were none left there were always 
plenty more. There’s no use mincing matters, we all thought 
that our leaders must be first-class nincompoops to thrust us 
into such a hornet’s nest, with no support at hand, and leave 
us to be crushed there without coming to our assistance. 
And then our General, Douay,* poor devil ! neither a fool nor 
a coward, that man, — a bullet comes along and lays him on 
his back. That ended it ; no one left to command us ! No 
matter, though, we kept on fighting all the same ; but they 
were too many for us, we had to fall back at last. We held 
the railway station for a long time, and then we fought behind 
a wall, and the uproar was enough to wake the dead. And 
then, when the city was taken, I don’t exactly remember how 
it came about, but we were upon a mountain, the Geissberg, 
1 think they call it, and there we intrenched ourselves in a 
sort of castle, and how we did give it to the pigs ! they jumped 
about the rocks like kids, and it was fun to pick ’em off and 
see ’em tumble on their no.se. But what would you have? 
they kept coming, coming, all the time, ten men to our one, 
and all the artillery they could wish for. Courage is a very 
good thing in its place, but sometimes it gets a man into diffi- 

* This was Abel Douay — not to be confounded with his brother, Felix, 
who commanded the yth corps. — 'Fr. 


56 


me' DOH'NFALL 


culties, and so, at last, when it got too hot to stand it any 
longer, we cut and run. But regarded as nincompoops, our 
officers were a decided success ; don’t you think so, Picot ? ” 

There was a brief interval of silence. Picot tossed off a 
glass of the white wine and wiped his mouth with the back of 
his hand. 

“ Of course,” said he. “ It was just the same at Froeschwiller ; 
the general who would give battle under such circumstances 
is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum. That’s what my captain 
said, and he’s a little man who knows what he is talking about. 
The truth of the matter is that no one knew anything ; we 
were only forty thousand strong, and we were surprised by a 
whole army of those pigs. And no one was expecting to fight 
that day ; battle was joined by degrees, one portion after 
another of our troops became engaged, against the wishes of 
our commanders, as it seems. Of course, I didn’t see the 
whole of the affair, but what I do know is that the dance lasted 
by fits and starts all day long ; a body would think it was 
ended ; not a bit of it ! away would go the music more furi- 
ously than ever. The commencement was at Woerth, a pretty 
little village with a funny clock-tower that looks like a big 
stove, owing to the earthenware tiles they have stuck all over 
it. I’ll be hanged if I know why we let go our hold of it that 
morning, for we broke all our teeth and nails trying to get it 
back again in the afternoon, without succeeding. Oh, my 
children, if I were to tell you of the slaughter there, the 
throats that were cut and the brains knocked out, you would 
refuse to believe me ! The next place where we had trouble 
was around a village with the jaw-breaking name of Elsass- 
hausen. We got a peppering from a lot of guns that banged 
away at us at their ease from the top of a blasted hill that we 
had also abandoned that morning, why, no one has ever been 
able to tell. And there it was that with these very eyes of 
mine I saw the famous charge of the cuirassiers. Ah, how 
gallantly they rode to their death, poor fellows ! A shame it 
was, I say, to let men and horses charge over ground like that, 
covered with brush and furze, cut up by ditches. And on top 
of it all, de Dieu ! what good could they accomplish? 
But it was very chic all the same ; it was a beautiful sight to 
see. The next thing for us to do, shouldn’t you suppose so? 
was to go and sit down somewhere and try to get our wind 
again. They had set fire to the village and it was burning 
like tinder, and the whole gang of Bavarian, Wurtemburgian 


THE DOWNFALL 


S7 


and Prussian pigs, more than a hundred and twenty thousand 
of them there were, as we found out afterward, had got around 
into our rear and on our flanks. But there was to be no rest 
for us then, for just at that time the fiddles began to play 
again a livelier tune than ever around FroeSchwiller. For 
there’s no use talking, fellows, MacMahon may be a blockhead 
but he is a brave man ; you ought to have seen him on his big 
horse, with the shells bursting all about him ! The best thing 
to do would have been to give leg-bail at the beginning, for it 
is no disgrace to a general to refuse to fight an army of supe- 
rior numbers, but he, once we had gone in, was bound to see 
the thing through to the end. And see it through he did ! 
why, I tell you that the men down in Froesch wilier were no 
longer human beings ; they were ravening wolves devouring 
one another. For near two hours the gutters ran red with 
blood. All the same, however, we had to knuckle under in 
the end. And to think that after it was all over they should 
come and tell us that we had whipped the Bavarians over on 
our left ! By the piper that played before Moses, if we had 
only had a hundred and twenty thousand men, if we had had 
guns, and leaders with a little pluck !” 

Loud and angry were the denunciations of Coutard and 
Picot in their ragged, dusty uniforms as they cut themselves 
huge slices of bread and bolted bits of cheese, evoking their 
bitter memories there in the shade of the pretty trellis, where 
the sun played hide and seek among the purple and gold of 
the clusters of ripening grapes. They had come now to the 
horrible flight that succeeded the defeat ; the broken, demor- 
alized, famishing regiments flying through the fields, the high- 
roads blocked with men, horses, wagons, guns, in inextricable 
confusion ; all the wreck and ruin of a beaten army that pressed 
on, on, on* with the chill breath of panic on their backs. As 
they had not had wit enough to fall back while there was time 
and take post among the passes of the Vosges, where ten thou- 
sand men would have sufficed to hold in check a hundred thou- 
sand, they should at least have blown up the bridges and de- 
stroyed the tunnels ; but the generals had lost their heads, and 
both sides were so dazed, each was so ignorant of the other’s 
movements, that for a time each of them was feeling to ascer- 
tain the position of its opponent, MacMahon hurrying off 
toward Luneville, while the Crown Prince of Prussia was 
looking for him in the direction of the Vosges. On the 7th 
the remnant of the ist corps passed through Saverne, like a 


THE DO IV N FALL 


swollen stream that carries away ui)on its muddy bosom all 
with which it comes in contact. On the 8th, at Sarrebourg, 
the 5th corps came tumbling in upon the ist, like one mad 
mountain torrent pouring its waters into another, 'I'he 5th 
was also flying, defeated without having fought a battle, 
sweeping away with it its commander, poor General de Failly, 
almost crazy with the tliought that to his inactivity was im- 
puted the responsibility of the defeat, when the fault all rested 
in the Marshal’s having failed to send him orders. The mad 
flight continued on the 9th and loth, a stampede in which no 
one turned to look behind him. On the iith, in order to turn 
Nancy, which a mistaken rumor had reported to be occupied 
by the enemy, they made their way in a pouring rainstorm to 
Bayon ; the 12th they camped at Haroue, the 13th at Vicherey, 
and on the 14th were at Neufchateau, where at last they 
struck the railroad, and for three days the work went 
on of loading the weary men into the cars that were to take 
them to Chalons. Twenty-four hours after the last train 
rolled out of the station the Prussians entered the town. “Ah, 
the cursed luck ! ” said Picot in conclusion ; “ how we had to 
ply our legs ! And we who should by rights have been in 
hospital ! ” 

Coutard emptied what was left in the bottle into his own 
and his comrade’s glass. “ Yes, we got on our pins, somehow, 
and are running yet. Bah ! it is the best thing for us, after 
all, since it gives us a chance to drink the health of those who 
were not knocked over.” 

Maurice saw through it all. The sledge hammer blow of 
Froesch wilier, following so close on the heels of the idiotic 
surprise at Wissembourg, was the lightning flash whose bale- 
ful light disclosed to him the entire naked, terrible truth. We 
were taken unprepared ; we had neither guns, nor men, nor 
generals, while our despised foe was an innumerable host, 
provided with all modern appliances and faultless in discipline 
and leader.ship. The three German armies had burst apart 
the weak line of our seven corps, scattered between Metz and 
Strasbourg, like three powerful wedges. We were doomed to 
fight our battle out unaided ; nothing could be hoped for now 
from Austria and Italy, for all the Emperor’s plans were dis- 
concerted by the tardiness of our operations and the incapacity 
of the commanders. Fate, even, seemed to be working against 
us, heaping all sorts of obstacles and ill-timed accidents in our 
path and favoring the secret plan of the Prussians, which was 


THE DOIVNFALL 


59 


to divide our armies, throwing one portion back on Metz, 
where it would be cut off from France, while they, having first 
destroyed the other fragment, should be marching on Paris. 
It was as plain now as a problem in mathematics that our 
defeat would be owing to causes that were patent to everyone ; 
it was bravery without intelligent guidance pitted against 
numbers and cold science. Men might discuss the question 
as they would in after days ; happen what might, defeat was 
certain in spite of everything, as certain and inexorable as the 
laws of nature that rule our planet. 

In the midst of his uncheerful revery, Maurice’s eyes sud- 
denly lighted on the legend scrawled on the wall before him — 
Vive Napoleon! and a sensation of intolerable distress seemed 
to pierce his heart like a red hot iron. Could it be true, then, 
that France, whose victories were the theme of song and story 
everywhere, the great nation whose drums had sounded 
throughout the length and breadth of Europe, had been 
thrown in the dust at the first onset by an insignificant race, 
despised of everyone ? Fifty years had sufficed to compass 
it ; the world had changed, and defeat most fearful had over- 
taken those who had been deemed invincible. He remembered 
the words that had been uttered by Weiss, his brother-in-law, 
during that evening of anxiety when they were at Mtilhausen. 
Yes, he alone of them had been clear of vision, had penetrated 
the hidden causes that had long been slowly sapping our 
strength, had felt the freshening gale of youth and progress 
under the impulse of which Germany was being wafted on- 
ward to prosperity and power. Was not the old warlike age 
dying and a new one coming to the front ? Woe to that one 
among the nations which halted in its onward march ! the 
victory is to those who are with the advance-guard, to those 
who are clear of head and strong of body, to the most power- 
ful. 

But just then there came from the smoke-blackened 
kitchen, where the walls were bright with the colored prints 
of Epinal, a sound of voices and the squalling of a girl who 
submits, not unwillingly, to be tousled. It was Lieutenant 
Rochas, availing himself of his privilege as a conquering hero, 
to catch and kiss the pretty waitress. He came out into the 
arbor, where he ordered a cup of coffee to be served him, and 
as he had heard the concluding words of Picot’s narrative, 
proceeded to take a hand in the conversation : 

“ Bah ! my children, those things that you are speaking of 


6o 


THE DOWNFALL 


don’t amount to anything. It is only the beginning of the 
dance ; you will see the fun commence in earnest presently. 
Pardi! up to the present time they have been five to our one, 
but things are going to take a change now ; just put that in 
your pipe and smoke it. We are three hundred thousand strong 
here, and every move we make, which nobody can see through, 
is made with the intention of bringing the Prussians down on 
us, while Bazaine, who has got his eye on them, will take 
them in their rear. And then we’ll smash ’em, crac ! just as I 
smash this fly ! ” 

r^Bringing his hands together with a sounding clap he caught 
and crushed a fly on the wing, and he laughed loud and 
cheerily, believing with all his simple soul in the feasibility of 
a plan that seemed so simple, steadfast in his faith in the in- 
vincibility of French courage. He good-naturedly informed 
the two soldiers of the exact position of their regiments, then 
lit a cigar and seated himself contentedly before his demi 
tasse. 

‘‘The pleasure was all mine, comrades!” Maurice re- 
plied to Coutard and Picot, who, as they were leaving, thanked 
him for the cheese and wine. 

He had also called for a cup of coffee and sat watching the 
Lieutenant, whose hopefulness had communicated itself to 
him, a little surprised, however, to hear him enumerate their 
strength at three hundred thousand men, when it was not 
more than a hundred thousand, and at his happy-go-lucky 
way of crushing the Prussians between the two armies of 
Chalons and Metz. But then he, too, felt such need of some 
comforting illusion! Why should he not continue to hope 
when all those glorious memories of the past that he had 
evoked were still ringing in his ears ? The old inn was so 
bright and cheerful, with its trellis hung with the purple grapes 
of France, ripening in the golden sunlight ! And again his confi- 
dence gained a momentary ascendancy over the gloomy despair 
that the late events had engendered in him. 

Maurice’s eyes had rested for a moment on an officer of 
chasseurs d’Afrique who, with his orderly, had disappeared at 
a sharp trot around the corner of the silent house where the 
Emperor was quartered, and when the orderly came back 
alone and stopped with his two horses before the inn door he 
gave utterance to an exclamation of surprise : 

“ Prosper ! Why, I supposed you were at Metz ! ” 

It was a young man of Remilly, a simple farm-laborer, 


THE DOWNFALL 


6l 


whom he had known as a boy in the days when he used to go 
and spend his vacations with his uncle Fouchard. He had 
been drawn, and when the war broke out had been three 
years in Africa ; he cut quite a dashing figure in his sky-blue 
jacket, his wide red trousers with blue stripes and' red woolen 
belt, with his sun-dried face and strong, sinewy limbs that in- 
dicated great strength and activity. 

“ Hallo ! it’s Monsieur Maurice ! I’m glad to see you !” 

He took things very easily, however, conducting the steam- 
ing horses to the stable, and to his own, more particularly, 
giving a paternal attention. It was no doubt his affection for 
the noble animal, contracted when he was a boy and rode him 
to the plow, that had made him select the cavalry arm of 
the service. 

“ We’ve just come in from Monthois, more than ten leagues 
at a stretch,” he said when he came back, “ and Poulet will 
be wanting his breakfast.” 

Poulet was the horse. He declined to eat anything himself ; 
would only accept a cup of coffee. He had to wait for his 
officer, who had to wait for the Emperor ; he might be five 
minutes, and then again he might be two hours, so his offi- 
cer had told him to put the horses in the stable. And as 
Maurice, whose curiosity was aroused, showed some disposi- 
tion to pump him, his face became as vacant as a blank page. 

“Can’t say. An errand of some sort — papers to be de- 
livered.” 

But Rochas looked at the chasseur with an eye of tender- 
ness, for the uniform awakened old memories of Africa. 

“ Eh ! my lad, where were you stationed out there ? ” 

“ At Med^ah, Lieutenant.” 

Ah, Medeah ! And drawing their chairs closer togethei 
they started a conversation, regardless of difference in rank. 
The life of the desert had become a second nature for Pros- 
per, where the trumpet was continually calling them to arms, 
where a large portion of their time was spent on horseback, 
riding out to battle as they would to the chase, to some grand 
battueof Arabs. There was just one soup-basin for every six 
men, or tribe, as it was called, and each tribe was a family by 
itself, one of its members attending to the cooking, another 
washing their linen, the others pitching the tent, caring for 
the horses, and cleaning the arms. By day they scoured the 
country beneath a sun like a ball of blazing copper, loaded 
down with the burden of their arms and utensils ; at night 


62 


THE TO I FA' FALL 


they built great fires to drive away the mosquitoes and sat 
around them, singing the songs of France. Often it hap- 
pened that in the luminous darkness of the night, thick set 
with stars, they had to rise and restore peace among their 
four-footed friends, who, in the balmy softness of the air, had 
set to biting and kicking one another, uprooting their pickets 
and neighing and snorting furiously. Then there was the 
delicious coffee, their greatest, indeed their only, luxury, which 
they ground by the primitive appliances of a carbine-butt and 
a porringer, and afterward strained through a red woolen 
sash. But their life was not one of unalloyed enjoyment ; 
there were dark days, also, when they were far from the 
abodes of civilized man with the enemy before them. No 
more fires, then ; no singing, no good times. There were 
times when hunger, thirst and want of sleep caused them 
horrible suffering, but no matter ; they loved that daring, 
adventurous life, that war of skirmishes, so propitious for the 
display of personal bravery and as interesting as a fairy tale, 
enlivened by the razzias, which were only public plundering 
on a larger scale, and by marauding, or the private pecula- 
tions of the chicken-thieves, which afforded many an amusing 
story that made even the generals laugh. 

“ Ah ! ” said Prosper, with a more serious face, “ it’s dif- 
ferent here ; the fighting is done in quite another way.” 

And in reply to a question asked by Maurice, he told the 
story of their landing at Toulon and the long and wearisome 
march to Luneville. It was there that they first received news 
of Wissembourg and Froesch wilier. After that his account 
was less clear, for he got the names of towns mixed, Nancy 
and Saint-Mihiel, Saint-Mihiel and Metz. There must have 
been heavy fighting on the 14th, for the sky was all on fire, 
but all he saw of it was four uhlans behind a hedge. On the 
1 6th there was another engagement ; they could hear the 
artillery going as early as six o’clock in the morning, and he 
had been told that on the i8th they started the dance again, 
more lively than ever. But the chasseurs were not in it that 
time, for at Gravelotte on the i6th, as they were standing 
drawn up along a road waiting to wheel into column, the 
iMiiperor, who passed that way in a victoria, took them to act 
as his escort to Verdun. And a pretty little jaunt it was, 
twenty-six miles at a hard gallop, with the fear of being cut 
off by the Prussians at any moment ! 

“ And what of Bazaine ? ” asked Rochas. 


THE DOWNFALL 6 ^ 

‘‘ Bazaine ? they say that he is mightily well pleased that the 
Emperor lets him alone.” 

But the Lieutenant wanted to know if Bazaine was coming 
to join them, whereon Prosper made a gesture expressive of 
uncertainty ; what did any one know ? Ever since the i6th 
their time had been spent in marchmg and countermarching in 
the rain, out on reconnoissance and grand-guard duty, and 
they had not seen a sign of an enemy. Now they were part of 
the army of Chalons. His regiment, together with two regi- 
ments of chasseurs de France and one of hussars, formed one 
of the divisions of the cavalry of reserve, the first division, 
commanded by General Margueritte, of whom he spoke with 
most enthusiastic warmth. 

“Ah, the bougie! the enemy will catch a Tartar in him! 
But what’s the good talking ? the only use they can find for us 
is to send us pottering about in the mud.” 

There was silence for a moment, then Maurice gave some 
brief news of 4<.eniilly and uncle Fouchard, and Prosper ex- 
pressed his regret that he could not go and shake hands with 
Honore, the quartermaster-sergeant, whose battery was sta- 
tioned more than a league away, on the other side of the Laon 
road. But the chasseur pricked up his ears at hearing the 
whinnying of a horse and rose and went out to make sure that 
Poulet was not in want of anything. It was the hour sacred 
to coffee and pousse-caf b, and it was not long before the little 
hostelry was full to overflowing with officers and men of every 
arm of the service. There was not a vacant table, and the 
bright uniforms shone resplendent against the green back- 
ground pf leaves checkered with spots of sunshine. Major 
Bouroche had just come in and taken a seat beside Rochas, 
when Jean presented himself with an order. 

“ Lieutenant, the captain desires me to say that he wishes to 
see you at three o’clock on company business.” 

Rochas signified by a nod of the head that he had heard, 
and Jean did not go away at once, but stood smiling at 
Maurice, who was lighting a cigarette. Ever since the occur- 
rence in the railway car there had been a sort of tacit truce 
between the two men ; they seemed to be reciprocally study- 
ing each other, with an increasing interest and attraction. 
But just then Prosper came back, a little' out of temper. 

“1 mean to have something to eat unless my officer comes 
out of that shanty pretty quick. The Emperor is just as likely 
as not to stay away until dark, confound it all.” 


64 


THE downfall 


“ Tell me,” said Maurice, his curiosity again getting the 
better of him, “isn’t it possible that the news you are bringing 
may be from Bazaine ? ” 

“Perhaps so. There was a good deal of talk about him 
down there at Monthois,” 

At that moment there was a stir outside in the street, and 
Jean, who was standing by one of the doors of the arbor, 
turned and said : 

“ The Emperor ! ” 

Immediately everyone was on his feet. Along the broad, 
white road, with its rows of poplars on either side, came a 
troop of cent-gardes, spick and span in their brillant uniforms, 
their cuirasses blazing in the sunlight, and immediately behind 
them rode the Emperor, accompanied by his staff, in a wide 
open space, followed by a second troop of cent-gardes. 

There was a general uncovering of heads, and here and 
there a hurrah was heard ; and the Emperor raised his head as 
he passed ; his face looked drawn, the eyes Were dim and 
watery. He had the dazed appearance of one suddenly 
aroused from slumber, smiled faintly at sight of the cheerful 
inn, and saluted. From behind them Maurice and Jean dis- 
tinctly heard old Eouroche growl, having first surveyed the 
sovereign with his p>racticed eye : 

“There’s no mistake about jt, that man is in a bad way” 
/ Then he succinctly completed his diagnosis : “ His jig is up 
/ Jean shook his head and thought in his limited, commi 
sense way : “ It is a confounded shame to let a man like th 
have command of the army ! ” And ten minutes lat( 
when Maurice, comforted by his good breakfast, shook han 
with Prosper and strolled away to smoke more cigarettes, 
carried with him the picture of the Emperor, seated on 1 
easy-gaited horse, so pale, so gentle, the man of thought, t 
dreamer, wanting in energy when the moment for action came. 
He was reputed to be good-hearted, capable, swayed by gen- 
erous and noble thoughts, a silent man of strong and tenacious 
will ; he was very brave, too, scorning danger with the scorn 
of the fatalist for whom destiny has no fears ; b' 





moments a fatal lethargy seemed to overcome 


peared to become paralyzed in presence of results, and powei> 
I less thereafter to struggle against Fortune should she prove 
I adverse. And Maurice asked himself if his were not a special 
1 physiological condition, aggravated by suffering ; if the indeii- 
' sion and increasing incapacity that the Emperor had displayed 


THE DOWNFALL 


65 


ever since the opening of the campaign were not to be attrib- 
uted to his manifest illness. That would explain everything: 
a minute bit of foreign substance in a man’s system, and em- 
pires totte r. 

^'~The camp that evening was all astir with activity ; officers 
were bustling about with orders and arranging for the start 
the following morning at five o’clock. Maurice experienced a 
shock of surprise and alarm to learn that once again all their 
plans were changed, that they were not to fall back on Paris, 
but proceed to Verdun and effect a junction with Bazaine. 
There was a report that dispatches had come in during the 
day from the marshal announcing that he was retreating, and 
the young man’s thoughts reverted to the officer of chasseurs 
and his rapid ride from Monthois ; perhaps he had been the 
bearer of a copy of the dispatch. So, then, the opinions of 
the Empress-regent and the Council of Ministers had prevailed 
with the vacillating MacMahon, in their dread to see the Em- 
peror return to Paris and their inflexible determination to 
push the army forward in one supreme attempt to save the 
dynasty ; and the poor Emperor, that wretched man for whom 
there was no place in all his vast empire, was to be bundled 
to and fro among the baggage of his army like some worth- 
less, worn-out piece of furniture, condemned to the irony of 
•dragging behind him in his suite his imperial household, 
vcent-gardes, horses, carriages, cooks, silver stew-pans and 
'Cas.es of champagne, trailing his flaunting mantle, embroidered 
with the Napoleonic bees, through the blood and mire of the 
^highways of his retreat. 

At midnight Maurice was not asleep ; he was feverishly 
wakeful, and his gloomy reflections kept him tossing and 
tumbling on his pallet. He finally arose and went outside, 
where he found comfort and refreshment in the cool night air. 
The sky was overspread with clouds, the darkness was intense ; 
along the front of the line the expiring watch fires gleamed 
with a red and sullen light at distant intervals, and in the 
'deathlike, boding silence could be heard the long-drawn 
ibreathing of the hundred thousand men who slumbered there. 
Then Maurice became more tranquil, and there descended on 
ihim a sentiment of brotherhood, full of compassionate kind- 
ness for all those slumbering fellow-creatures, of whom thou- 
;sands would soon be sleeping the sleep of death. Brave 
fellows ! True, many of them were thieves and drunkards, 
.but think of what they had suffered and the excuse there was 


66 


THE DOWNFALL 


for them in the universal demoralization ! The glorious 
veterans of Solferino and Sebastopol were but a handful, 
incorporated in the ranks of the newly raised troops, too 
few in number to make their example felt. The four corps 
that had been got together and equipped so hurriedly, devoid 
of every element of cohesion, were the forlorn hope, the ex- 
piatory band that their rulers were sending to the sacrifice in 
the endeavor to avert the wrath of destiny. They would 
bear their cross to the bitter end, atoning with their life’s 
blood for the faults of others, glorious amid disaster and 
defeat. 

And then it was that Maurice, there in the darkness that 
was instinct with life, became conscious that a great duty lay 
before him. He ceased to beguile himself with the illusive 
prospect of great victories to be gained ; the march to Verdun 
was a march to death, and he so accepted it, since it was 
their lot to die, with brave and cheerful resignation. 


IV. 

O N Tuesday, the 23d of August, at six o’clock in the morn- 
ing, camp was broken, and as a stream that has momen- 
tarily expanded into a lake resumes its course again, the 
hundred and odd thousand men of the army of Chalons put 
themselves in motion and soon were pouring onward in a 
resistless torrent ; and nothwithstanding the rumors that had 
been current since the preceding day, it was a great surprise 
to most to see that instead of continuing their retrograde 
movement they were leaving Paris behind them and turning 
their faces toward the unknown regions of the East. 

At five o’clock in the morning the 7th corps was still unsup- 
plied with cartridges. For two days the artillerymen had 
been working like beavers to unload the materiel, horses, and 
stores that had been streaming from Metz into the overcrowded 
station, and it was only at the very last moment that some cars 
of cartridges were discovered among the tangled trains, and 
that a detail which included Jean among its numbers was 
enabled to bring back two hundred and forty thousand on 
carts that they had hurriedly requisitioned. Jean distributed 
the regulation number, one hundred cartridges to a man, 
among his squad, just as Gaude, the company bugler, sounded 
the order to march. 


THE DOWNFALL 


67 


The io6th was not to pass through Rheims, their orders 
being to turn the city and debouch into the Chalons road 
farther on, but on this occasion there was the usual failure to 
regulate the order and time of marching, so that, the four 
corps having commenced to move at the same moment, they 
collided when they came out upon the roads that they were to 
traverse in common and the result was inextricable confusion. 
Cavalry and artillery were constantly cutting in among the 
infantry and bringing them to a halt ; whole brigades were 
compelled to leave the road and stand at ordered arms in the 
plowed fields for more than an hour, waiting until the way 
should be cleared. And to make matters worse, they had 
hardly left the camp when a terrible storm broke over them, 
the rain pelting down in torrents, drenching the men com- 
pletely and adding intolerably to the weight of knapsacks and 
great-coats. Just as the rain began to hold up, however, the 
1 06th saw a chance to go forward, while some zouaves in an 
adjoining field, who were forced to wait yet for a while, amused 
themselves by pelting one another with balls of moist earth, 
and the consequent condition of their uniforms afforded them 
_much merriment. 

The sun suddenly came shining out again in the clear sky, 
the warm, bright sun of an August morning, and with it came 
returning gayety ; the men were steaming like a wash of linen 
hung out to dry in the open air : the moisture evaporated 
from their clothing in little more time than it takes to tell it, 
and when they were warm and dry again, like dogs who shake 
the water from them when they emerge from a pond, they 
chaffed one another good-naturedly on their bedraggled 
appearance and the splashes of mud on their red trousers. 
Wherever two roads intersected another halt was necessitated ; 
the last one was in a little village just beyond the walls of the 
city, in front of a small saloon that seemed to be doing a 
thriving business. Thereon it occurred to Maurice to treat 
the squad to a drink, by way of wishing them all good 
luck. 

“ Corporal, will you allow me ”* 

Jean, after hesitating a moment, accepted a “ pony ” of 
brandy for himself. Loubet and Chouteau were of the party 
(the latter had been watchful and submissive since that day 
when the corporal had evinced a disposition to use his heavy 
fists), and also Pache and Lapoulle, a couple of very decent 
fellows when there was no one to set them a bad example. 


68 


THE DOWNFALL 


“Your good health, corporal ! ” ’said Chouteau in a respect- 
ful, whining tone. 

“ Thank you ; here’s hoping that you may bring back your 
head and all your legs and arms ! ” Jean politely replied, 
while the others laughed approvingly. 

But the column was about to move ; Captain Beaudoin 
came up with a scandalized look on his face and a reproof at 
the tip of his tongue, while Lieutenant Rochas, more indul- 
gent to the small weaknesses of his men, turned his head so as 
not to see what was going on. And now they were stepping 
out at a good round pace along the Chalons road, which 
stretched before them for many a long league, bordered with 
trees on either side, undeviatingly straight, like a never-ending 
ribbon unrolled between the fields of yellow stubble that were 
dotted here and there with tall stacks and wooden windmills 
brandishing their lean arms. More to the north were rows of 
telegraph poles, indicating the position of other roads, on 
which they could distinguish the black, crawling lines of other 
marching regiments. In many places the troops had left the 
highway and were moving in deep columns across the open 
plain. To the left and front a cavalry brigade was seen, jog- 
ging along at an easy trot in a blaze of sunshine. The entire 
wide horizon, usually so silent and deserted, was alive and 
populous with those streams of men, pressing onward, onward, 
in long drawn, black array, like the innumerable throng of in- 
sects from some gigantic ant-hill. 

About nine o’clock the regiment left the Chalons road and 
wheeled to the left into another that led to Suippe, which, 
like the first, extended, straight as an arrow’s flight, far as the 
eye could see. The men marched at the route-step in two 
straggling files along either side of the road, thus leaving the 
central space free for the officers, and Maurice could not help 
noticing their anxious, care-worn air, in striking contrast with 
the jollity and good-humor of the soldiers, who were happy 
as children to be on the move once more. As the squad was 
near the head of the column he could even distinguish the 
Colonel, M. de Vineuil, in the distance, and was impressed by 
the grave earnestness of his manner, and his tall, rigid form, 
swaying in cadence to the motion of his charger. The band 
had been sent back to the rear, to keep company with the 
regimental wagons ; it played but once during that entire cam- 
paign. Then came the ambulances and engineer’s train attached 
to the division, and succeeding that the corps train, an intermin.- 


THE DOWNFALL 


69 


able procession of forage wagons, closed vans for stores, carts 
for baggage, and vehicles of every known description, occupy- 
ing a space of road nearly four miles in length, and which, at the 
infrequent curves in the highway, they could see winding be- 
hind them like the tail of some great serpent. And last of 
all, at the extreme rear of the column, came the herds, “ ra- 
tions on the hoof,” a surging, bleating, bellowing mass of 
sheep and oxen, urged on by blows and raising clouds of 
dust, reminding one of the old warlike peoples of the East 
and their migrations. 

Lapoulle meantime would every now and then give a hitch 
of his shoulders in an attempt to shift the weight of his knap- 
sack when it began to be too heavy. The others, alleging 
that he was the strongest, were accustomed to make him carry 
the various utensils that were common to the squad, including 
the big kettle and the water-pail ; on this occasion they had 
even saddled him with the company shovel, assuring him 
that it was a badge of honor. So far was he from complain- 
ing that he was now laughing at a song with which Loubet, 
the tenor of the squad, was trying to beguile the tedium of 
the way. Loubet had made himself quite famous by reason 
of his knapsack, in which was to be found a little of every- 
thing : linen, an extra pair of shoes, haberdashery, chocolate, 
brushes, a plate and cup, to say nothing of his regular 
rations' of biscuit and coffee, and although the all-devour- 
ing receptacle also contained his cartridges, and his blankets 
were rolled on top of it, together with the shelter-tent and 
stakes, the load nevertheless appeared light, such an excel- 
lent system he had of packing his trunk, as he himself ex- 
pressed it. 

“ It’s a beastly country, all the same ! ” Chouteau kept re- 
peating from time to time, casting a look of intense disgust 
over the dreary plains of ‘‘ lousy Champagne.” 

Broad expanses of chalky ground of a dirty white lay before 
and around them, and seemed to have no end. Not a farm- 
house to be seen anywhere, not a living being ; nothing but 
flocks of crows, forming small spots of blackness on the im- 
mensity of the gray waste. On the left, far away in the dis- 
tance, the low hills that bounded the horizon in that direction 
were crowned by woods of somber pines, while on the right 
an unbroken wall of trees indicated the course of the river 
Vesle. But over there behind the hills they had seen for the 
last hour a dense smoke wap rising, the heavjr clpuds of which 


70 


THE DOWNFALL 


obscured the sky and told of a dreadful conflagration raging at 
no great distance. 

“ What is burning over there ? was the question that was 
on the lips of everyone. 

The answer was quickly given and ran through the column 
from front to rear. The camp of Chalons had been fired, it 
was said, by order of the Emperor, to keep the immense col- 
lection of stores there from falling into the hands of the 
Prussians, and for the last two days it had been going up in 
flame and smoke. The cavalry of the rear guard had been 
instructed to apply the torch to two immense warehouses, 
filled with tents, tent-poles, mattresses, clothing, shoes, 
blankets, mess utensils, supplies of every kind sufficient for 
the equipment of a hundred thousand men. Stacks of forage 
also had been lighted, and were blazing like huge beacon-fires, 
and an oppressive silence settled down upon the army as it 
pursued its march across the wide, solitary plain at sight of 
that dusky, eddying column that rose from behind the distant 
hills, filling the heavens with desolation. All that was to be 
heard in the bright sunlight was the measured tramp of many 
feet upon the hollow ground, while involuntarily the eyes of 
all were turned on that livid cloud whose baleful shadows 
rested on their march for many a league. 

Their spirits rose again when they made their midday halt 
in a field of stubble, where the men could seat themselves on 
their unslung knapsacks and refresh themselves with a bite. 
The large square biscuits could only be eaten by crumbling 
them in the soup, but the little round ones were quite a deli- 
cacy, light and appetizing ; the only trouble was that they left 
an intolerable thirst behind them. Pache sang a hymn, being 
invited thereto, the squad joining in the chorus. Jean smiled 
good-naturedly without attempting to check them in their 
amusement, while Maurice, at sight of the universal cheerful- 
ness and the good order with which their first day’s march was 
conducted, felt a revival of confidence. The remainder of 
the allotted task of the day was performed with the same 
light-hearted alacrity, although the last five miles tried their 
endurance. They had abandoned the high road, leaving the 
village of Prosnes to their right, in order to avail themselves 
of a short cut across a sandy heath diversified by an occasional 
thin pine wood, and the entire division, with its interminable 
train at its heels, turned and twisted in and out among the 
trees, sinking ankle deep in the yielding sand at every step. 


The downfall 


It seemed as if the cheerless waste would never end ; all that 
they met was a flock of very lean sheep, guarded by a big 
black dog. 

It was about four o’clock when at last the io6th halted for 
the night at Dontrien, a small village on the banks of the 
Suippe. The little stream winds among some pretty groves 
of trees ; the old church stands in the middle of the grave- 
yard, which is shaded in its entire extent by a magnificent 
chestnut. The regiment pitched its tents on the left bank, pi 
a meadow that sloped gently down to the margin of the river. 
1 he officers said that all the four corps would bivouac that 
evening on the line of the Suippe between Auberive and 
Hentregiville, occupying the intervening villages of Dontrien, 
Betheniville and Pont-Faverger, making a line of battle 
nearly five leagues long. 

Gaude immediately gave the call for “ distribution,” and 
Jean had to run for it, for the corporal was steward-in-chief, 
and it behooved him to be on the lookout to protect his men’s 
interests. He had taken Lapoulle with him, and in a quarter 
of an hour they returned with some ribs of beef and a bundle 
of firewood. In the short space of time succeeding their 
arrival three steers of the herd that followed the column had 
been knocked in the head under a great oak-tree, skinned, and 
cut up. Lapoulle had to return for bread, which the villagers 
of Dontrien had been baking all that afternoon in their ovens. 
There was really no lack of anything on that first day, setting 
aside wine and tobacco, with which the troops were to be 
obliged to dispense during the remainder of the campaign. 

Upon Jean’s return he found Chouteau engaged in raising 
the tent, assisted by Pache ; he looked at them for a moment 
with the critical eye of an old soldier who had no great opinion 
of their abilities. 

“ It will do very well if the weather is fine to-night,” he said 
at last, “ but if it should come on to blow we would like enough 
wake up and find ourselves in the river. Let me show you.” 

And he was about to send Maurice with the large pail for 
water, but the young man had sat down on the ground, taken 
off his shoe, and was examining his right foot. 

“ Hallo, there ! what’s the matter with you ? ” 

“ My shoe has chafed my foot and raised a blister. IMy 
other shoes were worn out, and when we were at Rheims J 
bought these, like a big fool, because they were a good fit. 1 
should have selected gunboats.” 


12 


ftiE DOWNPALL 


Jean kneeled and took the foot in his hand, turning it ovei* 
as carefully as if it had been a little child’s, with a disapprov- 
ing shake of his head. 

“ You must be careful ; it is no laughing matter, a thing like 
that. A soldier without the use of his feet is of no good to 
himself or anyone else. When we were in Italy my captain 
used always to say that it is the men’s legs that win battles.” 

He bade Pache go for the water, no very hard task, as the 
rixer was but a few yards away, and Loubet, having in the 
meantime dug a shallow trench and lit his fire, was enabled to 
commence opefations on his pot-au-feu^ which he did by put- 
ting on the big kettle full of water and plunging into it the 
meat that he had previously corded together with a bit of 
iwmQj secundum arte fji. Then it was solid comfort for them to 
watch the boiling of the soup ; the whole squad, their chores 
done up and their day’s labor ended, stretched themselves on 
the grass around the fire in a family group, full of tender 
anxiety for the simmering meat, while Loubet occasionally 
stirred the pot with a gravity fitted to the importance of his 
position. Like children and savages, their sole instinct was to 
eat and sleep, careless of the morrow, while advancing to face 
unknown risks and dangers. 

But Maurice had unpacked his knapsack and come across 
a newspaper that he had bought at Rheims, and Chouteau 
asked : 

“ Is there anything about the Prussians in it ? Read us the 
news ! ” 

They were a happy family under Jean’s mild despotism. 
Maurice good-naturedly read such news as he thought might 
interest them, while Pache, the seamstress of the company, 
mended his greatcoat for him and Lapoulle cleaned his musket. 
The first item was a splendid victory won by Bazaine, who had 
driven an entire Prussian corps into the quarries of Jaumont, 
and the trumped-up tale was told with an abundance of 
dramatic detail, how men and horses went over the precipice 
and were crushed on the rocks beneath out of all semblance of 
humanity, so that there was not one whole corpse found for 
burial. Then there were minute details of the pitiable condi- 
tion of the German armies ever since they had invaded France : 
the ill-fed, poorly equipped soldiers were actually falling from 
inanition and dying by the roadside of horrible diseases. 
Another article told how the king of Prussia had the diarrhea, 
and how Bismarck had broken his leg in jumping from the 


THE DOWNFALL 


73 


window of an inn where a party of zouaves had just missed 
capturing- him. Capital news ! Lapoulle laughed over it as if 
he would split his sides, while Chouteau and the others, with- 
out expressing the faintest doubt, chuckled at the idea that 
soon they would be picking up Prussians as boys pick up 
sparrows in a field after a hail-storrn. But they laughed 
loudest at old Bismarck’s accident ; oh ! the zouaves and the 
turcos, they were the boys for one’s money ! It was said that 
the Germans were in an ecstasy of fear and rage, declaring 
that it was unworthy of a nation that claimed to be civilized 
to employ such heathen savages in its armies. Although they 
had been decimated at Froeschwiller, the foreign troops seemed 
to have a good deal of life left in them. 

It was just striking six from the steeple of the little church 
of Dontrien when Loubet shouted : 

“ Come to supper ! ” 

The squad lost no time in seating themselves in a circle. 
At the very last moment Loubet had succeeded in getting 
some vegetables from a peasant who lived hard by. That 
made the crowning glory of the feast : a soup perfumed with 
carrots and onions, that went down the throat soft as velvet— 
what could they have desired more ? The spoons rattled 
merrily in the little wooden bowls. Then it devolved on Jean, 
who always served the portions, to distribute the beef, and it 
behooved him that day to do it with the strictest impartiality, 
for hungry eyes were watching him and there would have 
been a growl had anyone received a larger piece than his 
neighbors. They concluded by licking the porringers, and 
were smeared with soup up to their eyes. — " 

“Ah, novi de Dieu ! '* Chouteau declared when he had 
finished, throwing himself flat on his back ; “ I would rather 
take that than a beating, any day ! ” 

Maurice, too, whose foot pained him less now that he could 
give it a little rest, was conscious of that sensation of well- 
being that is the result of a full stomach. He was beginning 
to take more kindly to his rough companions, and to bring 
himself down nearer to their level under the pressure of the 
physical necessities of their life in common. That night he 
slept the same deep sleep as did his five tent-mates ; they all 
huddled close together, finding the sensation of animal warmth 
not disagreeable in the heavy dew that fell. It is necessary 
to state that Lapoulle, at the instigation of Loubet, had gone 
to a stack not far away and feloniously appropriated a quantity 


74 


THE no ir NEALE 


of straw, in which our six gentlemen snored as if it had been 
a bed of down. And from Auberive to Hentregiville, along 
the pleasant banks of the Suippe as it meandered sluggishly 
between its willows, the fires of those hundred thousand 
sleeping men illuminated the starlit night for fifteen miles, 
like a long array of twinkling stars. 

At sunrise they made coffee, pulverizing the berries in a 
wooden bowl with a musket-butt, throwing the powder into 
boiling water, and settling it with a drop of cold water. The 
luminary rose that morning in a bank of purple and gold, 
affording a spectacle of royal magnificence, but Maurice had 
no eye for such displays, and Jean, with the weather-wisdom 
of a peasant, cast an anxious glance at the red disk, which 
presaged rain ; and it was for that reason that, the surplus of 
bread baked the day before having been distributed and the 
squad having received three loaves, he reproved severely 
Loubet and Pache for making them fast on the outside of 
their knapsacks ; but the tents were folded and the knapsacks 
packed, and so no one paid any attention to him. Six o’clock 
was sounding from all the bells of the village when the army 
put itself in motion and stoutly resumed its advance in the 
bright hopefulness of the dawn of the new day. 

The io6th, in order to reach the road that leads from 
Rheims to Vouziers, struck into a crossroad, and for more 
than an hour their way was an ascending one. Below them, 
toward the north, Betheniville was visible among the trees, 
where the Emperor was reported to have slept, and when 
they reached the Vouziers road the level country of the pre- 
ceding day again presented itself to their gaze and the lean 
fields of “ lousy Champagne ” stretched before them in weari- 
some monotony. They now had the Arne, an insignificant 
stream, flowing on their left, while to the right the treeless, 
naked country stretched far as the eye could see in an ap- 
parently interminable horizon. They passed through a village 
or two : Saint-Clement, with its single winding street bordered 
by a double row of houses, Saint-Pierre, a little town of miserly 
rich men who had barricaded their doors and windows. The 
long halt occurred about ten o’clock, near another village, 
Saint-Etienne, where the men were highly delighted to find 
tobacco once more. The 7th corps had been cut up into 
several columns, and the io6th headed one of these columns, 
having behind it only a battalion of chasseurs and the reserve 
artillery. Maurice turned his head at every bend in the road 


THE DOWNFALL 


75 


to catch a glimpse of the long train that had so excited his 
interest the day before, but in vain ; the herds had gone off 
in some other direction, and all he could see was the guns, 
looming inordinately large upon those level plains, like monster 
insects of somber mien.^ 

After leaving Saint-Etienne, however, there was a change 
for the worse, and the road from bad became abominable, ris- 
ing by an easy ascent between great sterile fields in which the 
only signs of vegetation were the everlasting pine woods with 
their dark verdure, forming a dismal contrast with the gray- 
white soil. It was the most forlorn spot they had seen yet. 
The ill-paved road, washed by the recent rains, was a lake of 
mud, of tenacious, slippery gray clay, which held the men’s 
feet like so much pitch. It was wearisome work ; the troops 
were exhausted and could not get forward, and as if things 
were not bad enough already, the rain suddenly began to 
come down most violently. The guns were mired and had to 
be left in the road. 

Chouteau, who had been given the squad’s rice to carry, 
fatigued and exasperated with his heavy load, watched for an 
opportunity when no one was looking and dropped the pack- 
age. But Loubet had seen him. 

“ See here, that’s no way ! you ought not to do that. 
The comrades will be hungry by and by.” 

“ Let be ! ” replied Chouteau. “There is plenty of rice ; 
they will give us more at the end of the march.” 

And Loubet, who had the bacon, convinced by such cogent 
reasoning, dropped his load in turn. 

Maurice was suffering more and more with his foot, of 
which the heel was badly inflamed. He limped along in such 
a pitiable state that Jean’s sympathy was aroused. 

“ Does it hurt ? is it no better, eh ? ” And as the men were 
halted just then for a breathing spell, he gave him a bit of 
good advice. “ 'Fake off your, shoe and go barefoot ; the 
cool earth will ease the pain.” 

And in that way Maurice found that he could keep up with 
his comrades with some degree of comfort ; he experienced a 
sentiment of deep gratitude. It was a- piece of great good 
luck that their squad had a corporal like him, a man who had 
seen service and knew all the tricks of the trade : he was an 
uncultivated peasant, of course, but a good fellow all the 
same. 

It was late when they reached their place of bivouac at 


THE DOWNFALL 


f6 

Contreuve, after marcliing a long time on the Chalons and 
Vouziers road and descending by a steep path into the valley 
of the Semide, up which they came through a stretch of nar- 
row meadows. The landscape had undergone a change ; 
they were now in the Ardennes, and from the lofty hills above 
the village where the engineers had staked off the ground for 
the 7th corps’ camp, the valley of the Aisne was dimly visible 
in the distance, veiled in the pale mists of the passing 
shower. 

Six o’clock came and there had been no distribution of 
rations, whereon Jean, in order to keep occupied, apprehen- 
‘sive also of the consequences that might result from the high 
■wind that was springing up, determined to attend in person 
to the setting up of the tent. He showed his men how it 
should be done, selecting a bit of ground that sloped away a 
little to one side, setting the pegs at the proper angle, and 
-digging a little trench around the whole to carry off the 
water. Maurice was excused from the usual nightly drudg- 
ery on account of his sore foot, and was an interested witness 
•of the intelligence and handiness of the big young fellow 
whose general appearance was so stolid and ungainly. He 
was completely knocked up with fatigue, but the confidence 
that they were now advancing with a definite end in view 
served to sustain him. They had had a hard time of it since 
they left Rheims, making nearly forty miles in two days’ 
marching ; if they could maintain the pace and if they kept 
straight on in the direction they were pursuing, there could 
be no doubt that they would destroy 'the second German 
army and effect a junction with Bazaine before the third, the 
Crown Prince of Prussia’s, which was said to be at Vitry-le 
Fran9ois, could get up to Verdun. 

“ Oh, come now ! I wonder if they are going to let us 
starve ! ” was Chouteau’s remark when, at seven o’clock, there 
was still no sign of rations. . 

By way of taking time by the forelock, Jean had instructed 
Loubet to light the fire and put on the pot, and as there was 
no issue of fire-wood, he had been compelled to be blind to 
the slight irregularity of the proceeding when that individual 
remedied the omission by tearing the palings from an adjacent 
fence. When he suggested knocking up a dish of bacon and 
rice, however, the truth had to come out, and he was informed 
that the rice and bacon were lying in the mud of the Saint- 
Etienne road. Chouteau lied with the greatest effrontery, de- 


THE DOWNFALL 


77 


daring that the package must have slipped from his shoulders 
without his noticing it. 

“ You are a couple of pigs ! ” Jean shouted angrily, ‘‘ to throw 
away good victuals, when there are so many poor devils going 
with an empty stomach ! ” 

It was the same with the three loaves that had been fastened 
outside the knapsacks ; they had not listened to his warning, 
and the consequence was that the rain had soaked the bread 
and reduced it to paste. 

“ A pretty pickle we are in ! ” he continued. “ We had 
food in plenty, and now here we are, without a crumb ! Ah ! 
you are a pair of dirty pigs ! " 

At that moment the first sergeant’s call was heard, and 
Sergeant Sapin, returning presently with his usual doleful air, 
informed the men that it would be impossible to distribute ra- 
tions that evening, and that they would have to content them- 
selves with what eatables they had on their persons. It was 
reported that the trains had been delayed by the bad weather, 
and as to the herds, they must have straggled off as a result 
of conflicting orders. Subsequently it became known that on 
that day the 5th and 12th corps had got up to Rethel, where 
the headquarters of the army were established, and the inhabi- 
tants of the neighboring villages, possessed with a mad desire 
to see the Emperor, had inaugurated a hegira toward that 
town, taking with them everything in the way of provisions ; 
so that when the 7th corps came up they found themselves in a 
land of nakedness : no bread, no meat, no people, even. To 
add to their distress a misconception of orders had caused the 
supplies of the commissary department to be directed on 
Chene-Populeux. This was a state of affairs that during the 
entire campaign formed the despair of the wretched commis- 
saries, who had to endure the abuse and execrations of the 
whole army, while their sole fault lay in being punctual at 
rendezvous at which the troops failed to appear. 

“It serves you right, you dirty pigs ! ” continued Jean in 
his wrath, “ and you don’t deserve the trouble that I am going 
to have in finding you something to eat, for I suppose it is my 
duty not to let you starve, all the same.” And he started off 
to see what he could find, as every good corporal does under 
such circumstances, taking with him Pache, who was a favorite 
on account of his quiet manner, although he considered him 
rather too priest-ridden. 

But Loubet’s attention had just been attracted to a little 


78 


THE downfall 


farmhouse, one of the last dwellings in Contreuve, Some two 
or three hundred yards away, where there seemed to him to 
be promise of good results. He called Chouteau and La- 
poulle to him and said : 

“ Come along, and let’s see what we can do. I’ve a notion 
there’s grub to be had over that way.” 

So Maurice was left to keep up the fire and watch the kettle, 
in which the water was beginning to boil. He had seated 
himself on his blanket and taken off his shoe in order to give 
his blister a chance to heal. It amused him to look about 
the camp and watch the behavior of the different squads now 
that there was to be no issue of rations ; the deduction -that he 
arrived at was that some of them were in a chronic state of 
destitution, while others reveled in continual abundance, and 
that these conditions were ascribable to the greater or less de- 
gree of tact and foresight of the corporal and his men. Amid 
the confusion that reigned about the stacks and tents he re- 
marked some squads who had not been able even to start a 
fire, others of which the men had abandoned hope and lain 
themselves resignedly down for the night, while others again 
were ravenously devouring, no one knew what, something 
good, no doubt. Another thing that impressed him was the 
good order that prevailed in the artillery, which had its camp 
above him, on the hillside. The setting sun peeped out from 
a rift in the clouds and his rays were reflected from the bur- 
nished guns, from which the men had cleansed the coat of mud 
that they had picked up along the road. 

In the meantime General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, command- 
ing the brigade, had found quarters suited to his taste in the 
little farmhouse toward which the designs of Loubet and his 
companions were directed. He had discovered something 
that had the semblance of a bed and was seated at table with 
a roasted chicken and an omelette before him ; consequently 
he was in the best of humors, and as Colonel de Vineuil hap- 
pened in just then on regimental business, had invited him to 
dine. They were enjoying their repast, therefore, waited on 
by a tall, light-haired individual who had been in the farmer’s 
service only three days and claimed to be an Alsatian, one of 
those who had been forced to leave their country after the 
disaster of Froeschwiller. The general did not seem to think 
it necessary to use any restraint in presence of the man, com- 
in ‘iiring freely on the movements of the army, and finally, 
ioigcLlul of the fact that he was not an inhabitant of the 


THE DOWNFALL 


79 


country, began to question him about localities and distances. 
His questions displayed such utter ignorance of the country 
that the colonel, who had once lived at Mezieres, was as- 
tounded ; he gave such information as he had at command, 
which elicited from the chief the exclamation : 

“ It is just like our idiotic government ! How can they 
expect us to fight in a country of which we know nothing?” 

The colonel’s face assumed a look of vague consternation. 
He knew that immediately upon the declaration of war maps 
of Germany had been distributed among the officers, while it 
was quite certain that not oner of them had a map of France. 
He was amazed and confounded by what he had seen and 
heard since the opening of the campaign. His unquestioned 
bravery was his distinctive trait ; he was a somewhat weak and 
not very brilliant commander, which caused him to be more 
loved than respected in his regiment. 

“It’s too bad that a man can’t eat his dinner in peace ! ” 
the general suddenly blurted out. “What does all that 
uproar mean ? Go and see what the matter is, you Alsatian 
fellow ! ” 

But the farmer anticipated him by appearing at the door, 
sobbing and' gesticulating like a crazy man. They were rob- 
bing him, the zouaves and chasseurs were plundering his house. 
As he was the only one in the village who had anything to 
sell he had foolishly allowed himself to be persuaded to open 
shop. At first he had sold his eggs and chickens, his rabbits, 
and potatoes, without exacting an extortionate profit, pocket- 
ing his money and delivering the merchandise ; then the 
customers had streamed in in a constantly increasing throng, 
jostling and worrying the old man, finally crowding him aside 
and taking all he had without pretense of payment. And thus 
it was throughout the war ; if many peasants concealed their 
property and even denied a drink of water to the thirsty 
soldier, it was because of their fear of the irresistible inroads 
of that ocean of men, who swept everything clean before them, 
thrusting the wretched owners from their houses and beggar- 
ing them. 

“ Eh ! will you hold your tongue, old man ! ” shouted the 
general in disgust. “ Those rascals ought to be shot at the 
rate of a dozen a day. What is one to do ? ” And to avoid 
taking the measures that the case demanded he gave orders to 
close the door, while the colonel explained to him that there 
had been no issue of rations and the men were hungry. 


THE DOWNFALL 


.80 


While these things were going on within the house Loubet out- 
side had discovered a field of potatoes ; he and Lapoulle scaled 
the fence and were digging the precious tubers with their 
hands and stuffing their pockets with them when Chouteau, 
who in the pursuit of knowledge was looking over a low wall, 
gave a shrill whistle that called them hurriedly to his side. 
They uttered an exclamation of wonder and delight ; there 
was a flock of geese, ten fat, splendid geese, pompously wad- 
dling about a small yard. A council of war was held forth- 
with, and it was decided that Lapoulle should storm the place 
and make prisoners of the garrison. The conflict was a 
bloody one ; the venerable gander on which the soldier laid 
his predaceous hands had nearly deprived him of his nose 
with its bill, hard and sharp as a tailor's shears. Then he 
caught it by the neck and tried to choke it, but the bird tore 
his trousers with its strong claws and pummeled him about the 
body with its great wings. He finally ended the battle by 
braining it with his fist, and it had not ceased to struggle 
when he leaped the wall, hotly pursued by the remainder of 
the flock, pecking viciously at his legs. 

When they got back to camp, with the unfortunate gander 
and the potatoes hidden in a bag, they found that Jean and 
Pache had also been successful in their expedition, and had 
enriched the common larder with four loaves of fresh bread and 
a. cheese that they had purchased from a worthy old woman. 

“ The water is boiling and we will make some coffee," 
said the corporal. “ Here are bread and cheese ; it will be a 
regular feast ! ” 

He could not help laughing, however, when he looked down 
and saw the goose lying at his feet. He raised it, examining 
and hefting it with the judgment of an expert. 

“Ah ! upon my word, a fine bird ! it must weigh twenty 
pounds." 

“ We were out walking and met the bird," Loubet ex- 
plained in an unctuously sanctimonious voice, “ and it insisted 
on making our acquaintance.” 

Jean made no reply, but his manner showed that he wished 
to hear nothing more of the matter. Men must live, and then 
why in the name of common sense should not- those poor 
fellows, who had almost forgotten how poultry tasted, have a 
treat once in a way ! 

Loubet had already kindled the fire into a roaring blaze ; 
Pache and Lapoulle set to work to pluck the goose ; Chouteau, 


THE DOWNFALL 


8l 


who had run off to the artillerymen and begged a bit of twine, > 
came back and stretched it between two bayonets ; the bird 
was suspended in front of the hot fire and Maurice was given! 
a cleaning rod and enjoined to keep it turning. The big tin* 
basin was set beneath to catch the gravy. It was a triumph, 
of culinary art ; the whole regiment, attracted by the savory 
odor, came and formed a circle about the fire and licked their 
chops. And what a feast it was ! roast goose, boiled potatoes,, 
bread, cheese, and coffee ! When Jean had dissected the birds 
the squad applied itself vigorously to the task before it ; there 
was no talk of portions, every man ate as much as he was* 
capable of holding. They even sent a plate full over to the- 
artillerymen who had furnished the cord. 

The officers of the regiment that evening were a very 
hungry set of men, for owing to some mistake the canteen 
wagon was among the missing, gone off to look after the 
corps train, maybe. If the men were inconvenienced when 
there was no issue of rations they scarcely ever failed to find 
something to eat in the end ; they helped one another out ; the 
men of the different squads “chipped in ” their resources, each 
contributing his mite, while the officer, with no one to look to 
save himself, was in a fair way of starving as soon as he had 
not the canteen to fall back on. So there was a sneer on 
Chouteau’s face, buried in the carcass of the goose, as he saw 
Captain Beaudoin go by with his prim, supercilious air, for he 
had heard that officer summoning down imprecations on the 
driver of the missing wagon ; and he gave him an evil look out 
of the corner of his eye. 

“Just look at him! See, his nose twitches like a rabbit’s. 
He would give a dollar for the pope’s nose.” 

They all made merry at the expense of the captain, who was 
too callow and too harsh to be a favorite with his men ; they 
called him a ptte-sec. He seemed on the point of taking the 
squad in hand for the scandal they were creating with their 
goose dinner, but thought better of the matter, ashamed, prob- 
ably, to show his hunger, and walked off, holding his head 
very erect, as if he had seen nothing. 

As for Lieutenant Rochas, who was also conscious of a ter- 
ribly empty sensation in his epigastric region, he put on a 
brave face and laughed good-naturedly as he passed the thrice- 
lucky squad. His men adored him, in the first place because 
he was at sword’s points with the captain, that little whipper- 
snapper from Saint-Cyr, and also because hc- had opce carried 


82 


THE DOWNFALL 


a musket like themselves. He was not always easy to get 
along with, however, and there* were times when they would 
have given a good deal could they have cuffed him for his 
brutality. 

Jean glanced inquiringly at his comrades, and their mute 
reply being propitious, arose and beckoned to Rochas to follow _ 
him behind the tent. 

“ See here. Lieutenant, I hope you won’t be offended, but if 
it is agreeable to you ” 

And he handed him half a loaf of bread and a wooden bowl 
in which there were a second joint of the bird and six big 
mealy potatoes. 

That night again the six men required no rocking ; they 
digested their dinner while sleeping th.e sleep of the just. 
They had reason to thank the corporal for the scientific way 
in which he had set up their tent, for they were not even con- 
scious of a small hurricane that blew up about two o’clock, 
accompanied by a sharp down-pour of rain ; some of the tents 
were blown down, and the men, wakened out of their sound 
slumber, were drenched and had to scamper in the pitchy 
darkness, while theirs stood firm and they were warm and 
dry, thanks to the ingenious device of the trench. 

Maurice awoke at daylight, and as they were not to march 
until eight o’clock it occurred to him to walk out to the artil- 
lery camp on the hill and say how do you do to his cousin 
Honore. His foot was less painful after his good night’s rest. 
His wonder and admiration were again excited by the neatness 
and perfect order that prevailed throughout the encampment, 
the six, guns of a battery aligned with mathematical precision 
and accompanied by their caissons, prolonges, forage-wagons, 
and forges. A short way off, lined up to their rope, stood the 
horses, whinnying impatiently and turning their muzzles to 
the rising sun. He had no difficulty in finding Honore’s tent, 
thanks to the regulation which assigns to the men of each piece 
a separate street, so that a single glance at a camp suffices to 
show the number of guns. 

When Maurice reached his destination the artillerymen were 
already stirring and about to drink their coffee, and a quarrel 
had arisen between Adolphe, the forward driver, and Louis, 
the gunner, his mate. For the entire three years t*hat they had 
been “married,” in accordance with the custom which couples 
a driver with a gunner, they had lived happily together, with 
th^ one exception of meal-times. Louis, an intelligent man 


DOWNFALL 


83 

and the better informed of the two, did not grumble at the airs 
of superiority that are affected by every mounted over every 
unmounted man : he pitched the tent, made the soup, and did 
the chores, while Adolphe groomed his horses with the pride 
of a reigning potentate. When the former, a little black, lean 
man, afflicted with an enormous appetite, rose in arms against 
the exactions of the latter, a big, burly fellow with huge blonde 
mustaches, who insisted on being waited on like a lord, then 
the fun began. The subject matter of the dispute on the 
present morning was that Louis, who had made the coffee, 
accused Adolphe of having drunk it all. It required some 
diplomacy to reconcile them. 

Not a morning passed that Honore failed to go and look after 
his piece, seeing to it that it was carefully dried and cleansed 
from the night dew, as if it had been a favorite animal that 
he was fearful might take cold, and there it was that Maurice 
found him, exercising his paternal supervision in the crisp 
morning air. 

“ Ah, it’s you ! I knew that the io6th was somewhere in the 
vicinity ; I got a letter from Remilly yesterday and was in- 
tending to start out and hunt you up. Let’s go and have a 
glass of white wine.” 

For the sake of privacy he conducted his cousin to the 
little farmhouse that the soldiers had looted the day before, 
where the old peasant, undeterred by his losses and allured 
by the prospect of turning an honest penny, had tapped a 
cask of wine and set up a kind of public bar. He had ex- 
temporized a counter from a board rested on two empty 
barrels before the door of his house, and over it he dealt out 
his stock in trade at four sous a glass, assisted by the strapping 
young Alsatian whom he had taken into his service three days 
before. 

As Honors was touching glasses with Maurice his eyes 
lighted on this man. He gazed at him a moment as if stupe- 
fied, then let slip a terrible oath. 

“ F'omierre de Dieti ! Goliah ! ” 

And he darted forward and would have caught him by the 
throat, but the peasant, foreseeing in his action a repetition of 
his yesterday’s experience, jumped quickly within the house 
and locked the door behind him. For a moment confusion 
reigned about the premises ; soldiers came rushing up to see 
what was going on, while the quartermaster-sergeant shouted 
at the top of his voice : 


84 


THE DOWNFALL 


“ Open the door, open the door, you confounded idiot ! It 
is a spy, I tell you, a Prussian spy !” 

Maurice doubted no longer ; there was no room for mistake 
now ; the Alsatian was certainly the man whom he had seen 
arrested at the camp of Miilhausen and released because there 
was not evidence enough to hold him, and that man was 
Goliah, old Fouchard’s quondam assistant on his farm at 
Remilly. When finally the peasant opened his door the house 
was searched from top to bottom, but to no purpose ; the 
bird had flown, the gawky Alsatian, the tow-headed, simple- 
faced lout whom General Bourgain-Desfeuilles had questioned 
the day before at dinner without learning anything and before 
whom, in the innocence of his heart, he had disclosed things 
that would have better been kept secret. It was evident 
enough that the scamp had made his escape by a back window 
which was found open, but the hunt that was immediately 
started throughout the village and its environs had no results ; 
the fellow, big as he was, had vanished as utterly as a smoke- 
wreath dissolves upon the air. 

Maurice thought it best to take Honore away, lest in his 
distracted state he might reveal to the spectators unpleasant 
family secrets which they had no concern to know. 

'‘'‘Tonnere de Dieu ! he cried again, “it would have done 
me such good to strangle him ! — 'Fhe letter that I was 
speaking of revived all my old hatred for him.” 

And the two of them sat down upon the ground against a 
stack of rye a little way from the house, and he handed the 
letter to his cousin. 

It was the old story : the course of Honore Fouchard’s 
and Silvine Morange’s love had not run smooth. She, a 
pretty, meek-eyed, brown-haired girl, had in early childhood 
lost her mother, an operative in one of the factories of Rau- 
coLirt, and Doctor Dalichamp, her godfather, a worthy man 
who was greatly addicted to adopting the wretched little beings 
whom he ushered into the world, had conceived the idea of 
placing her in Father Fouchard’s family as small maid of all 
work. True it was that the old boor was a terrible skinflint 
and a harsh, stern taskmaster ; he had gone into the butcher- 
ing business from sordid love of lucre, and his cart was to be 
seen daily, rain or shine, on the roads of twenty communes; 
but if the child was willing to work she would have a home 
and a protector, perhaps some small prospect in the future. At 
all events she would be spared the contamination of the factory. 


TitS: DOWNFALL 


And naturally enough it came to pass that in old Fouchard’s 
household the son and heir and the little maid of all work fell 
in love with each other. Honore was then just turned six- 
teen and she was twelve, and when she was sixteen and he 
twenty there was a drawing for the army ; Honore, to his 
great delight, secured a lucky number and determined to 
marry. Nothing had ever passed between them, thanks to 
the unusual delicacy that was inherent in the lad’s tranquil, 
thoughtful nature, more than an occasional hug and a furtive 
kiss in the barn. But when he spoke of the marriage to his 
father, the old man, who had the stubbornness of the mule, an- 
grily told him that his son might kill him, but never, never would 
he consent, and continued to keep the girl about the house, not 
worrying about the matter, expecting it would soon blow over. 
For two years longer the young folks kept on adoring and 
desiring each other, and never the least breath of scandal 
sullied their names. Then one day there was a frightful 
quarrel between the two men, after which the young man, feeling 
he could no longer endure his father’s tyranny, enlisted and was 
packed off to Africa,while the butcher still retained the servant- 
maid, because she was useful to him. Soon after that a terrible 
thing happened : Silvine, who had sworn that she would be 
true to her lover and await his return, was detected one day, 
two short weeks after his departure, in the company of a 
laborer who had been working on the farm for some months 
past, that Goliah Steinberg, the Prussian, as he was called ; a 
tall, simple young fellow with short, light hair, wearing a per- 
petual smile on his broad, pink face, who had made himself 
Honore’s chum. Had Father Fouchard traitorously incited 
the man to take advantage of the girl ? or had Silvine, sick at 
heart and prostrated by the sorrow of parting with her lover, 
yielded in a moment of unconsciousness? She could not tell 
herself ; was dazed, and saw herself driven by the necessity of 
her situation to a marriage with Goliah. He, for his part, 
always with the everlasting smile on his face, made no objec- 
tion, only insisted on deferring the ceremony until the child 
should be born. When that event occurred he suddenly dis- 
appeared ; it was rumored subsequently that he had found 
work on another farm, over Beaumont way. These things had 
happened three years before the breaking out of the war, and 
now everyone was convinced that that artless, simple Goliah, 
who had such a way of ingratiating himself with the girls, was 
none else than one of those Prussian spies who filled our 


M 


TB£ downfall 


eastern provinces. When Honore learned the tidings over in 
Africa he was three months in hospital, as if the fierce sun of 
that country had smitten him on the neck with one of his fiery 
javelins, and never thereafter did he apply for leave of absence 
to return to his country for fear lest he might again set eyes 
on Silvine and her child. 

The artilleryman’s hands shook with agitation as Maurice 
perused the letter. It was from Silvine, the first, the only one 
that she had ever written him. What had been her guiding 
impulse, that silent, submissive woman, whose handsome black 
eyes at times manifested a startling fixedness of purpose in the 
midst of her never-ending slavery ? She simply said that she 
knew he was with the army, and though she might never see 
him again, she could not endure the thought that he might 
die and believe that she had ceased to love him. She loved 
him still, had never loved another ; and this she repeated 
again and again through four closely written pages, in words 
of unvarying import, without the slightest word of excuse for 
herself, without even attempting to explain what had happened. 
There was no mention of the child, nothing but an infinitely 
mournful and tender farewell. 

The letter produced a profound impression upon Maurice, 
to whom his cousin had once imparted the whole story. He 
raised his eyes and saw that Honore w'as weeping ; he em- 
braced him like a brother. 

“ My poor Honore.” 

But the sergeant quickly got the better of his emotion. He 
carefully restored the letter to its place over his heart and 
rebuttoned his jacket. 

“ Yes, those are things that a man does not forget. Ah ! 
the scoundrel, if I could but have laid hands on him ! But 
we shall see.” 

The bugles were sounding the signal to prepare for break- 
ing camp, and each had to hurry away to rejoin his command. 
The preparations for departure dragged, however, and the 
troops had to stand waiting in heavy marching order until 
nearly nine o’clock. A feeling of hesitancy seemed to have 
taken possession of their leaders ; there was not the resolute 
alacrity of the first two days, when the 7th corps had accom- 
plished forty miles in two marches. Strange and alarming 
news, moreover, had been circulating through the camp since 
morning, that the three other corps were marching northward, 
the ist at Juniville, the 5th and 12th at Rethel, and this 


THE DOWNFALL 


«7 

deviation from their route was accounted for on the ground of 
the necessities of the commissariat. Montmedy had ceased 
to be their objective, then? why were they thus idling away 
their time again ? What was most alarming of all was that 
the Prussians could not now be far away, for the officers had 
cautioned their men not to fall behind the column, as all strag- 
glers were liable to be picked up by the enemy’s light cavalry. 

It was the 25th of August, and Maurice, when he subse- 
quently recalled to mind Goliah’s disappearance, was certain 
that the man had been instrumental in affording the German 
staff exact information as to the movements of the army of 
Chalons, and thus producing the change of front of their third 
army. The succeeding morning the Crown Prince of Prussia 
left Revigny and the great maneuver was initiated, that gigantic 
movement by the flank, surrounding and enmeshing us by a 
series of forced marches conducted in the most admirable 
order through Champagne and the Ardennes. While the 
French were stumbling aimlessly about the country, oscillating 
uncertainly between one place and another, the Prussians 
were making their twenty miles a day and more, gradually 
contracting their immense circle of beaters upon the band of 
men whom they held within their toils, and driving their prey 
onward toward the forests of the frontier. 

A start was finally made, and the result of the day’s move- 
ment showed that the army was pivoting on its left ; the 7th 
corps only traversed the two short leagues between Con- 
treuve and Vouziers, while the 5th and 12th corps did not stir 
from Rethel, and the ist went no farther than Attigny. 
Between Contreuve and the valley of the Aisne the country 
became level again and was more bare than ever ; as they 
drew near to Vouziers the road wound among desolate hills 
and naked gray fields, without a tree, without a house, as 
gloomy and forbidding as a desert, and the day’s march, 
short as it was, was accomplished with such fatigue and dis- 
tress that it seemed interminably long. Soon aher midday, 
however, the ist and 3d divisions had passed through the 
city and encamped in the meadows on the farther bank of the 
Aisne, while a brigade of the second, which included the 
1 06th, had remained upon the left bank, bivouacking among 
the waste lands of which the low foot-hills overlooked the 
valley, observing from their position the Monthois road, 
which skirts the stream and by which the enemy was expected 
to make his appearance. 


88 


THE DOWNFALL 


And Maurice was dumfoundered to behold advancing along 
that Monthois road Margueritte’s entire division, the body of 
cavalry to which had been assigned the duty of supporting the 
7th corps and watching the left flank of the army. The 
report was that i£ was on its way to Chene-Populeux. AVhy 
was the left wing, where alone they were threatened by the 
enemy, stripped in that manner ? What sense was there in 
summoning in upon the center, where they could be of no 
earthly use, those two thousand horsemen, who should have 
been dispersed upon our flank, leagues away, as videttes to 
observe the enemy ? And what made matters worse was that 
they caused the greatest confusion among the columns of the 
7th corps, cutting in upon their line of march and producing 
an inextricable jam of horses, guns, and men. A squadron of 
chasseurs d’Afrique were halted for near two hours at the gate 
of VoLiziers, and by the merest chance Maurice stumbled on 
i’rosper, who had ridden his horse down to the bank of a 
neighboring pond to let him drink, and the two men were 
enabled to exchange a few words. The chasseur appeared 
stunned, dazed, knew nothing and had seen nothing since they 
left Rheims ; yes, though, he had : he had seen two uhlans 
more ; oh ! but they were will o’ the wisps, phantoms, they 
were, that appeared and vanished, and no one could tell 
whence they came nor whither they went. Their fame had 
spread, and stories of them were already rife throughout the 
country, such, for instance, as that of four uhlans galloping 
into a town with drawn revolvers and taking possession of it, 
when the corps to which they belonged was a dozen miles away. 
They were everywhere, preceding the columns like a buzzing, 
stinging swarm of bees, a living curtain, behind which the in- 
fantry could mask their movements and march and counter- 
march as securely as if they were at home upon parade. And 
Maurice’s heart sank in his bosom as he looked at the road, 
crowded with chasseurs and hussars which our leaders put to 
such poor use. 

“ Well, then, au revoir^' said he, shaking Prosper by the 
hand ; “ perhaps they will find something for you to do down 
yonder, after all.” 

But the chasseur appeared disgusted with the task assigned 
him. He sadly stroked Poulet’s neck and answered : 

“ Ah, what’s the use talking ! they kill our horses and let us 
rot in idleness. It is sickening.” 

When Maurice took off his shoe that evening to have a look 


THE DOWK^FALL 


89 


at his foot, which was aching and throbbing feverishly, the 
skin came with it ; the blood spurted forth and he uttered a 
cry of pain. Jean was standing by, and exhibited much pity 
and concern. 

“ Look here, that is becoming serious ; you are going to lie 
right down and not attempt to move. That foot of yours 
must be attended to. Let me see it.” 

He knelt down, washed the sore with his own hands and 
bound it up with some clean linen that he took from his knap- 
sack. He displayed the gentleness of a woman and the deft- 
ness of a surgeon, whose big fingers can be so pliant when 
necessity requires it. 

A great wave of tenderness swept over Maurice, his eyes 
were dimmed with tears, the familiar thou rose from his heart 
to his lips with an irresistible impulse of affection, as if in that 
peasant whom he once had hated and abhorred, whom only 
yesterday he had despised, he had discovered a long lost 
brother. 

“ Thou art a good fellow, thou ! Thanks, good friend.” 

And Jean, too, looking very happy, dropped into the second 
person singular, with his tranquil smile. 

“ Now, my little one, wilt thou have a cigarette ? I have 
some tobacco left.” 


V. 

O N the morning of the following day, the 26th, Maurice 
arose with stiffened limbs and an aching back, the result 
of his night under the tent. He was not accustomed yet 
to sleeping on the bare ground ; orders had been given before 
the men turned in that they were not to remove their shoes, 
and during the night the sergeants had gone the rounds, feel- 
ing in the darkness to see if all were properly shod and 
gaitered, so that his foot was much inflamed and very painful. 
In addition to his other troubles he had imprudently stretched 
his legs outside the canvas to relieve their cramped feeling 
and taken cold in them. 

Jean said as soon as he set eyes on him : 

“ If we are to do any marching to-day, my lad, you had 
better see the surgeon and get him to give you a place in one 
of the wagons.” 

Rut no one seemed to know what were the plans for the day, 
and the most conflicting reports prevailed. It appeared for a 


90 


THE DOWNFALL 


moment as if they were about to resume their march ; the 
teiits were struck and the entire corps took the road and passed 
through Vouziers, leaving on the right bank of the Aisne only 
one brigade of the second division, apparently to continue the 
observation of the Monthois road but all at once, as soon as 
they had put the town behind them and were on the left bank 
of the stream, they halted and stacked muskets in the fields and 
meadows that skirt the Grand-Pre road on either hand, and 
the departure of the 4th hussars, who just then moved off on 
that road at a sharp trot, afforded fresh food for conjecture. 

“ If we are to remain here I shall stay with you,” declared 
Maurice, who was not attracted by tl,je prospect of riding in 
an ambulance. 

It soon became known that they were to occupy their pres- 
ent camp until General Douay could obtain definite informa- 
tion as to the movements of the enemy. The general had been 
harassed by an intense and constantly increasing anxiety since 
the day before, when he had seen Margueritte’s division mov- 
ing toward Chene, for he knew that his flank was uncovered, 
that there was not a man to watch the passes of the Argonne, 
and that he was liable to be attacked at any moment. There- 
fore he had sent out the 4th hussars to reconnoiter the 
country as far as the defiles of Grand-Pre and Croix-aux-Bois, 
with strict orders not to return without intelligence. 

There had been an issue of bread, meat, and forage the day 
before, thanks to the efficient mayor of Vouziers, and about 
ten o’clock that morning permission had been granted the men 
to make soup, in the fear that they might not soon again have 
so good ail’ opportunity, when another movement of troops, 
the departure of Bordas’ brigade over the road taken by the 
hussars, set all tongues wagging afresh. What ! were they 
going to march again ? were they not to be given a chance to 
eat their breakfast in peace, now that the kettle was on the 
fire ? But the officers explained that Bordas’ brigade had only 
been sent to occupy Buzancy, a few kilometers from there. 
'Phere were others, indeed, who asserted that the hussars had 
encountered a strong force of the enemy’s cavalry and that 
the brigade had been dispatched to help them out of their 
difficulty. 

Maurice enjoyed a few hours of delicious repose. He had 
thrown himself on the ground in a field half way up the hill 
. where the regiment had halted, and in a drowsy state between 
h sleeping and waking was contemplating the verdant valley of 


THE DOWNFALL 


91 


^1 the Aisne, the smiling meadows dotted with clumps of trees, / 
among which the little stream wound lazily. Before him and j 
^closing the valley in that direction lay Vouziers, an amphi- v 
j theater of roofs rising one above another and overtopped by f 
" the church with its slender spire and dome-crowned tower, j 
Below him, near the bridge, smoke was curling upward from ; 
the tall chimneys of the tanneries, while farther away a great ' 
mill displayed its flour-whitened buildings among the fresh 1 
^ verdure of the growths that lined the waterside. The little \ 
.. town that lay there, bounding his horizon, hidden among the j 
” stately trees, appeared to him to possess a gentle charm ; it ! 
s brought him memories of boyhood, of the journeys that he had j 
i made to Vouziers in other days, when he had lived at Chene, • 
\ the village where he was born. For an hour he was oblivious I 

s of the outer world. 

The soup had long since been made and eaten and every- 
one was waiting to see what would happen next, when, about 
half-past two o’clock, the smoldering excitement began to gain 
strength, and soon pervaded the entire camp. Hurried or- 
ders came to abandon the meadows, and the troops ascended 
a line of hills between two villages, Chestres and Falaise, some 
two or three miles apart, and took position there. Already 
the engineers were at work digging rifle-pits and throwing 
up epaulements ; while over to the left the artillery had bccu- 
piad the summit of a rounded eminence. The rumor spread 
that General Bordas had sent in a courier to announce that he 
had encountered the enemy in force at Grand-Pre and had 
been compelled to fall back on Buzancy, which gave cause 
to apprehend that he might soon be cut off from retreat on 
Vouziers. For these reasons, the commander of the 7th 
corps, believing an attack to be imminent, had placed his men 
in position to sustain the first onset until the remainder of the 
army should have time to come to his assistance, and had 
started off one of his aides-de-camp with a letter to the mar- 
shal, apprising him of the danger, and asking him for re-en- 
forcements. Fearing for the safety of the subsistence train, 
which had come up with the corps during the night and was 
again dragging its interminable length in the rear, he sum- 
marily sent it to the right about and directed it to make the 
best of its way to Chagny. Things were beginning to look 
like fight. 

“ So, it looks like business this time — eh, Lieutenant ? ” 
Maurice ventured to ask Rochas. 




92 


THE DOWNEALL 


“ Yes, thank goodness,” replied the Lieutenant, his long 
arms going like windmills. “ Wait a little ; you’ll find it warm 
enough ! ” 

The soldiers were all delighted ; the animation in the camp 
was still more pronounced. A feverish impatience had taken 
possession of the men, now that they were actually in line of 
battle between Chestres and Falaise. At last they were to 
have a sight of those Prussians who, if the newspapers were 
to be believed, were knocked up by their long marches, deci- 
mated by sickness, starving, and in rags, and every man’s 
heart beat high with the prospect of annihilating them at a 
single blow. 

“ We are lucky to come across them again,” said Jean. 
“ They’ve been playing hide-and-seek about long enough 
since they slipped through our fingers after their battle down 
yonder on the frontier. But are these the same troops that 
whipped MacMahon, I wonder ? ” 

Maurice could not answer his question with any degree of 
certainty. It seemed to him hardly probable, in view of what 
he had read in the newspapers at Rheims, that the third 
army, commanded by the Crown Prince of Prussia, could be 
at Vouziers, when, only two days before, it was just on the 
point of going into camp at Vitry-le-Fran9ois. There had 
been some talk of a fourth army, under the Prince of Saxony, 
which was to operate on the line of the Meuse ; this ,was 
doubtless the one that was now before them, although their 
promptitude in occupying Grand-Pre was a matter of surprise, 
considering the distances. But what put the finishing touch 
to the confusion of his ideas was his stupefaction to hear Gen- 
eral Bourgain-Desfeuilles ask a countryman if the Meuse did 
not flow past Buzancy, and if the bridges there were strong. 
The general announced, moreover, in the confidence of his 
sublime ignorance, that a column of one hundred thousand 
men was on the way from Grand-Pre to attack them, while 
another, of sixty thousand, was coming up by the way of 
Sainte-Menehould. 

“ How’s your foot, Maurice ?” asked Jean. 

“ It don’t hurt now,” the other laughingly replied. “ If 
there is to be a fight, I think it will be quite well.” 

It was true ; his nervous excitement was so great that he 
was hardly conscious of the ground on which he trod. To 
think that in the whole campaign he had not yet burned 
powder ! He had gone forth to the frontier, he had endured 


doivnpall 


93 


the agony of that terrible night of expectation before Miil- 
hausen, and had not seen a Prussian, had not fired a shot ; 
then he had retreated with the rest to Belfort, to Rheims, had 
now been marching five days trying to find the enemy, and 
his useless chassepot was as clean as the day it left the shop, 
without the least smell of smoke on it. He felt an aching de- 
sire to discharge his piece once, if no more, to relieve the ten- 
sion of his nerves. Since the day, near six weeks ago, when 
he had enlisted in a fit of enthusiasm, supposing that he would 
surely have to face the foe in a day or two, all that he had 
done had been to tramp up and down the country on his poor, 
sore feet — the feet of a man who had lived in luxury, far from 
the battle-field ; and so, among all those impatient watchers, 
there was none who watched more impatiently than he the 
Grand-Pre road, extending straight away to a seemingly in- 
finite distance between two rows of handsome trees. Beneath 
him was unrolled the panorama of the valley ; the Aisne was, 
like a silver ribbon, flowing between its willows and poplars, 
and ever his gaze returned, solicited by an irresistible attrac- 
tion, to that road down yonder that stretched away, far as the 
eye could see, to the horizon. 

About four o’clock the 4th hussars returned, having made 
a wide circuit in the country round about, and stories, which 
grew as they were repeated, began to circulate of conflicts with 
uhlans, tending to confirm the confident belief which every- 
one had that an attack was imminent. Two hours later a 
courier came galloping in, breathless with terror, to announce 
that General Bordas had positive information that the enemy 
were on the Vouziers road, and dared not leave Grand-Pre. 
It was evident that that could not be true, since the courier 
had just passed over the road unharmed, but no one could tell 
at what moment it might be the case, and General Dumont, 
commanding the division, set out at once with his remaining 
brigade to bring off his other brigade that was in difficulty. 
The sun went down behind Vouziers and the roofs of the town 
were sharply profiled in black against a great red cloud. For 
a long time the brigade was visible as it receded between the 
double row of trees, until finally it was swallowed up in the 
gathering darkness. 

Colonel de Vineuil came to look after his regiment’s posi- 
tion for the night. He was surprised not to find Captain 
Beaudoin at his post, and as that officer just then chanced to 
come in from Vouziens, where he alleged in excuse for his 


94 


the ho IV aha ll 


absence that he had been breakfasting with the Baronne de 
Ladicourt, he received a sharp reprimand, which he digested 
in silence, with the rigid manner of a martinet conscious of 
being in the wrong. 

“My children,” said the Colonel, as he passed along the 
line of men, “ we shall probably be attacked to-night, or if not, 
then by day-break to-morrow morning at the latest. Be pre- 
pared, and remember that the io6th has never retreated before 
the enemy.” 

The little speech was received with loud hurrahs ; everyone, 
in the prevailing suspense and discouragement, preferred to 
“ take the wipe of the dish-clout ” and have done with it. 
Rifles were examined to see that they were in good order, belts 
were refilled with cartridges. As they had eaten their soup 
that morning, the men were obliged to content themselves with 
biscuits and coffee. An order was promulgated that there was 
to be no sleeping. The grand-guards were out nearly a mile 
to the front, and a chain of sentinels at frequent intervals 
extended down to the Aisne. The officers were seated in 
little groups about the camp-fires, and beside a low wall at the 
left of the road the fitful blaze occasionally flared up and 
rescued from the darkness the gold embroideries and bedizened 
uniforms of the Commander-in-Chief and his staff, flitting to 
and fro like phantoms, watching the road and listening for the 
tramp of horses in the mortal anxiety they were in as to the 
fate of the third division. 

It was about one o’clock in the morning when it came 
Maurice’s turn to take his post as sentry at the edge of an 
orchard of plum-trees, between the road and the river. The 
night was black as ink, and as soon as his comrades left him 
and he found himself alone in the deep silence of the sleeping 
fields he was conscious of a sensation of fear creeping over 
him, a feeling of abject terror such as he had never known before 
and which he trembled with rage and shame at his inability to 
conquer. He turned his head to cheer himself by a sight of 
the camp-fires, but they were hidden from him by a wood ; 
there was naught behind him but an unfathomable sea of 
blackness ; all that he could discern was a few distant lights 
still dimly burning in Vouziers, where the inhabitants, doubt- 
less forewarned and trembling at the thought of the impending 
combat, were keeping anxious vigil. His terror was increased, 
if that were possible, on bringing his piece to his shoulder to 
find that he could not even distinguish the sights on it. Then 


THE DOWNFALL 


95 


commenced a period of suspense that tried his nerves most 
cruelly ; every faculty of his being was strained and concen- 
trated in the one sense of hearing; sounds so faint as to be 
imperceptible reverberated in his ears like the crash of thunder ; 
the plash of a distant waterfall, the rustling of a leaf, the 
movement of an insect in the grass, were like the booming of 
artillery. AVas that the tramp of cavalry, the deep rumbling 
of gun-carriages driven at speed, that he heard down there to 
the right ? And there on his left, what was that ? was it not 
the sound of stealthy whispers, stifled voices, a party creeping 
up to surprise him under cover of the darkness ? Three times 
he was on the point of giving the alarm by firing his piece. 
The fear that he might be mistaken and incur the ridicule of 
his comrades served to intensify his distress. He had kneeled 
upon the ground, supporting his left shoulder against a tree ; 
it seemed to him that he had been occupying that position for 
hours, that they had forgotten him there, that the army had 
moved away without him. Then suddenly, at once, his fear 
left him ; upon the road, that he knew was not two hundred 
yards away, he distinctly heard the cadenced tramp of m'arch- 
ing men. Immediately it flashed across liis mind as a certainty 
that they were the troops from Grand-Pre, whose coming had 
been awaited with such anxiety — General Dumont bringing in 
•Bordas’ brigade. At that same moment the corporal of the 
guard came along with the relief ; he had been on post a little 
less than the customary hour. 

He had been right ; it was the 3d division returning to 
cam.p. Everyone felt a sensation of deep relief. Increased 
precautions were taken, nevertheless, for what fresh intelli- 
gence they received tended to confirm what they supposed 
they already knew of the enemy’s approach. A few uhlans, 
forbidding looking fellows in their long black cloaks, were 
brought in as prisoners, but they were uncommunicative, and 
so daylight came at last, the pale, ghastly light of a rainy 
morning, bringing with it no alleviation of their terrible sus- 
pense. No one had dared to close an eye during that long- 
night. About seven o’clock Lieutenant Rochas affirmed that 
MacMahoii was coming up with the whole- army. The truth 
of the matter was that General Douay, in reply to his dispatch 
of the preceding day announcing that a battle at Vouziers was 
inevitable, had received a letter from the marshal enjoining 
him to hold the position until re-enforcements could reach 
him ; the forward movement had been arrested ; the ist corps 


^6 


THE DOWNFALL 


was being directed on Terron, the 5th on Buzancy, while the 
12th was to remain at Chene and constitute our second line. 
Then the suspense became more breathless still ; it was to be 
no mere skirmish that the peaceful valley of the Aisne was to 
witness that day, but a great battle, in which would partici- 
pate the entire army, that was even now turning its back upon 
the Meuse and marching southward ; and there was no making 
of soup, the men had to content themselves with coffee and 
hard-tack, for everyone was saying, without troubling himself 
to ask why, that the “ wipe of the dish-clout ” was set down for 
midday. An aide-de-camp had been dispatched to the mar- 
shal to urge him to hurry forward their supports, as intelli- 
gence received from every quarter made it more and more 
certain that the two Prussian armies were close at hand, and 
three hours later still another officer galloped off like mad to- 
ward Chene, where general headquarters were located, with a 
request for instructions, for consternation had risen to a 
higher pitch then ever with the receipt of fresh tidings from 
the maire of a country commune, who told of having seen a 
hundred thousand men at Grand-Pre, while another hundred 
thousand were advancing by way of Buzancy. 

Midday came, and not a sign of the Prussians. At one 
o’clock, at two, it was the same, and a reaction of lassitude 
and doubt began to prevail among the troops. Derisive jeers 
were heard at the expense of the generals : perhaps they had 
seen their shadow on the wall ; they should be presented with 
a pair of spectacles. A pretty set of humbugs they were, to 
have caused all that trouble for nothing ! A fellow who 
passed for a wit among his comrades shouted : 

“ It is like it was down there at Miilhausen, eh ? ” 

The words recalled to Maurice’s mind a flood of bitter 
memories. He thought of that idiotic flight, that panic that 
had swept away the 7th corps when there was not a German 
visible, nor within ten leagues of where they were, and now he 
had a distinct certainty that they were to have a renewal of 
that experience. It was plain that if twenty-four hours had 
elapsed since the skirmish at Grand-Pre and they had not 
been attacked, the reason was that the 4th hussars had merely 
struck up against a reconnoitering body of cavalry ; the main 
body of the Prussians must be far away, probably a day’s 
march or two. Then the thought suddenly struck him of 
the time they had wasted, and it terrified him ; in three days 
they had only accomplished the di3tance from Contreuve to 


THE DOWNFALL 


97 


VoLiziers, a scant two leagues. On the 25th the other corps, 
alleging scarcity of supplies, had diverted their course to the 
north, while now, on the 27th, here they were coming south- 
ward again to fight a battle with an invisible enemy. Bordas’ 
brigade had followed the 4th hussars into the abandoned 
passes of the Argonne, and was supposed to have got itself in- 
to trouble ; the division had gone to its assistance, and that 
had been succeeded by the corps, and that by the entire army, 
and all those movements had amounted to nothing. Maurice 
trembled as he reflected how pricelessly valuable was every 
hour, every minute, in that mad project of joining forces with 
Bazaine, a project that could be carried to a successful issue 
only by an officer of genius, with seasoned troops under him, 
who should press forward to his end with the resistless energy 
of a whirlwind, crushing every obstacle that lay in his path. 

“ It is all up with us ! ” said he, as the whole truth flashed 
through his mind, to Jean, who had given way to despair. 
Then as the corporal, failing to catch his meaning, looked at 
him wonderingly, he went on in an undertone, for his friend’s 
ear alone, to speak of their commanders : 

“ They mean well, but they have no sense, that’s certain — 
and no luck ! They know nothing ; they foresee nothing'; they 
have neither plans nor ideas, nor happy intuitions. Allons ! 
everything is against us ; it is all up ! ” 

And by slow degrees that same feeling of discouragement 
that Maurice had arrived at by a process of reasoning settled 
down upon the denser intellects of the troops who lay there 
inactive, anxiously awaiting to see what the end would be. 
Distrust, as a result of their truer perception of the position 
they were in, was obscurely burrowing in those darkened 
minds, and there was no man so ignorant as not to feel a sense 
of injury at the ignorance and irresolution of their leaders, 
although he might not have been able to express in distinct 
terms the causes of his exasperation. In the name of Heaven, 
what were they doing there, since the Prussians had not shown 
themselves 'i either let them fight and have it over with, or 
else go off to some place where they could get some sleep ; 
they had had enough of that kind of work. Since the depart- 
ure of the second aide-de-camp, who had been dispatched in 
quest of orders, this feeling of unrest had been increasing mo- 
mently ; men collected in groups, talking loudly and discuss- 
ing the situation pro and con, and the general inquietude 
conimunicating itself to the officers, they knew not what an- 


98 


THE DOWNFALL 


swer to make to those of their men who ventured to question 
them. They ought to be marching, it would not answer to 
dawdle thus ; and so, when it became known about five o’clock 
that the aide-de-camp had returned and that they were to re- 
treat, there was a sigh of relief throughout the camp and every 
heart was lighter. 

It seemed that the wiser counsel was to prevail, then, after 
all ! The Emperor and MacMahon had never looked with 
favor on the movement toward Montmedy, and now, alarmed 
to learn that they were again out-marched and out-maneuvered, 
and that they were to have the army of the Prince of Saxony 
as well as that of the Crown Prince to contend with, they had 
renounced the hazardous scheme of uniting their forces with 
Bazaine, and would retreat through the northern strongholds 
with a view to falling back ultimately on Paris. The 7th 
corps’ destination would be Chagny, by way of Chene, while 
the 5th corps would be directed on Poix, and the ist and 12th 
on Vendresse. But why, since they were about to fall back, 
had they advanced to the line of the Aisne ? Why all that waste 
of time and labor, when it would have been so easy and so 
rational to move straight from Rheims and occupy the strong 
positions in the valley of the IMarne ? Was there no guiding 
mind, no military talent, no common sense ? But there should 
be no more questioning; all should be forgiven, in the univer- 
sal joy at the adoption of that eminently wise counsel, which 
was the only means at their command of extricating themselves 
from the hornets’ nest into which they had rushed so impru- 
‘dently. All, officers and men, felt that they would be the 
stronger for the retrograde movement, that under the walls of 
Paris they would be invincible, and that there it was that the 
Prussians would sustain their inevitable defeat. But Vouziers 
must be evacuated before daybreak, and they must be well on 
the road to Chene before the enemy should learn of the move- 
ment, and forthwith the camp presented a scene of the great- 
est animation : trumpets sounding, officers hastening to and 
fro with orders, while the baggage and quartermaster’s trains, 
in order not to encumber the rear-guard, were sent forward in 
advance. 

Maurice was delighted. As he was endeavoring to explain 
to Jean the rationale of the impending movement, however, a 
cry of pain escaped him ; his excitement had subsided, and 
he was again conscious of his foot, eiching and burning as if it 
had been a ball of red-hot metal. 


THE DOWNFALL 


99 


“What’s the matter? is it hurting you again?” the cor- 
poral disked sympathizingly. And with his calm and sensible 
resourcefulness he said: “See here, little one, you told me 
yesterday that you have acquaintances in the town, yonder. 
You ought to get permission from the major and find some- 
one to drive you over to Chene, where you could have a good 
night’s rest in a comfortable bed. We can pick you up as we 
go by to-morrow if you are fit to march. What do you say 
to that, ” 

In Falaise, the village near which the camp was pitched, 
Maurice had come across a small farmer, an old friend of his 
father’s, who was about to drive his daughter over to Chene to 
visit an aunt in that town, and the horse was even then stand- 
ing waiting, hitched to a light carriole. The prospect was far 
from encouraging, however, when he broached the subject 
to Major Bouroche. 

“ I have a sore foot, monsieur the doctor ” 

Bouroche, with a savage shake of his big head with its leo- 
nine mane, turned on him with a roar : 

“ I am not monsieur the doctor ; who taught you man- 
ners ? ” 

And when Maurice, taken all aback, made a stammering 
attempt to excuse himself, he continued : 

“ Address me as major, do you hear, you great oaf ! ” 

He must have seen that he had not one of the common herd 
to deal with and felt a little ashamed of himself ; he carried it 
off with a display of more roughness. 

“ All a cock-and-bull story, that sore foot of yours ! — Yes, 
yes ; you may go. Go in a carriage, go in a balloon, if you 
choose. We have too many of you malingerers in the 
army ! ” 

When Jean assisted Maurice into the carriole the latter 
turned to thank him, whereon the two men fell into each 
other’s arms and embraced as if they were never to meet 
"again. Who could tell, amid the confusion and disorder of 
the retreat, with those bloody Prussians on their track ? 
Maurice could not tell how it was that there was already such 
a tender affection between him and the young man, and twice 
he turned to wave him a farewell. As he left the camp they 
were preparing to light great fires in order to mislead the 
enemy when they should steal away, in deepest silence, before 
the dawn of day. 

As they jogged along the farmer bewailed the terrible times 


lOO 


THE DOWNFALL 


through which they were passing. He had lacked the courage 
to remain at Falaise, and already was regretting that he had left 
it, declaring that if the Prussians burned his house it would 
ruin him. His daughter, a tall, pale young woman, wept 
copiously. But Maurice was like a dead man for want of 
sleep, and had no ears for the farmer’s lamentations ; he 
slumbered peacefully, soothed by the easy motion of the 
vehicle, which the little horse trundled over the ground at such 
a good round pace that it took them less than an hour and a 
half to accomplish the four leagues between Vouziers and 
Chene. It was not quite seven o’clock and scarcely beginning 
to be dark when the young man rubbed his eyes and alighted 
in a rather dazed condition on the public square, near the 
bridge over the canal, in front of the modest house where he 
was born and had passed twenty years of his life. He got 
down there in obedience to an involuntary impulse, although 
the house had been sold eighteen months before to a veterinary 
surgeon, and in reply to the farmer’s questions said that he 
knew quite well where he was going, adding that he was a 
thousand times obliged to him for his kindness. 

He continued to stand stock-still, however, beside the well 
in the middle of the little triangular place ; he was as if 
stunned ; his memory was a blank. Where had he intended to 
go ? and suddenly his wits returned to him and he remembered 
that it was to the notary’s, whose house was next door to his 
father’s, and whose mother, Madame Desvallieres, an aged and 
most excellent lady, had petted him when he was an urchin on 
account of their being neighbors. But he hardly recognized 
Chene in the midst of the hurly-burly and confusion into which 
the little town, ordinarily so dead, was thrown by the presence 
of an army corps encamped at its gates and filling its quiet 
streets with officers, couriers, soldiers, and camp-followers and 
stragglers of every description. The canal was there as of old, 
passing through the town from end to end and bisecting the 
market-place in the center into two equal-sized triangles con- 
nected by a narrow stone bridge; and there, on the other bank, 
was the old market with its moss-grown roofs, and the Rue 
Berond leading away to the left and the Sedan road to the 
right, but filling the Rue de Vouziers in front of him and ex- 
tending as far as the Hotel de Ville was such a compact, 
swarming, buzzing crowd that he was obliged to raise his eyes 
and take a look over the roof of the notary’s house at the slate- 
covered bell tower in order to assure himself that that was the 


THE DOWNFALL 


101 


quiet spot where he had played hop-scotch when he was a 
youngster. There seemed to be an effort making to clear the 
square ; some men were roughly crowding back the throng of 
idlers and gazers, and looking more closely he was surprised 
to see, parked like the guns of a battery, a collection of vans, 
baggage-wagons, and carriages open and closed ; a miscella- 
neous assortment of traps that he had certainly set eyes on 
before. 

It was daylight still ; the sun had just sunk in the canal at 
the point where it vanished in the horizon and the long, 
straight stretch of water was like a sea of blood, and Maurice 
was trying to make up his mind what to do when a woman who 
stood near stared at him a moment and then exclaimed: 

“ Why goodness gracious, is it possible ! Are you the Le- 
vasseur boy ?” 

And thereon he recognized Madame Combette, the wife of 
the druggist, whose shop was on the market-place. As he was 
trying to explain to her that he was going to ask good Madame 
Desvallieres to give him a bed for the night .she excitedly 
hurried him away. 

“ No, no ; come to our house. I will tell you why ” 

When they were in the shop and she had cautiously closed the 
door she continued: “You could not know, my dear boy, that 
the Emperor is at the Desvallieres.’ His officers took posses- 
sion of the house in his name and the family are not any too well 
pleased with the great honor done them, I can tell you. To 
think that the poor old mother, a woman more than seventy, 
was compelled to give up her room and go up and occupy a 
servant’s bed in the garret ! Look, there, on the place. All 
that you see there is the Emperor’s ; those are his trunks, don’t 
you see ! ” ■ 

And then Maurice remembered ; they were the imperial 
carriages and baggage-wagons, the entire magnificent train 
that he had seen at Rheims. 

“ Ah ! my dear boy, if you could but have seen the stuff 
they took from them, the silver plate, and the bottles of wine, 
and the baskets of good things, and the beautiful linen, and 
everything ! I can’t help wondering where they find room for 
such heaps of things, for the house is not a large one. Look, 
look ! see what a fire they have lighted in the kitchen ! ” 

He looked over at the small white, two-storied house that 
stood at the corner of the market-place and the Rue de Vouziers, 
a comfortable, unassuming house of bourgeois aspect ; how 


102 


THE DOWNFALL 


well he remembered it, inside and out, with its central hall 
and four rooms on each floor ; why, it was as if he had just 
left it ! There were lights in the corner room on the flrst 
floor overlooking the square ; the apothecary's wife informed 
him that it was the bedroom of the Emperor. But the chief 
center of activity seemed, as she had said, to be the kitchen, 
the window of which opened on the Rue de Vouziers. In all 
their lives the good people of Chene had witnessed no such 
spectacle, and the street before the house was filled with a 
gaping crowd, constantly coming and going, who stared with 
all their eyes at the range on which was cooking the dinner 
of an Emperor. To obtain a breath of air the cooks had 
thrown open the window to its full extent. They were three 
in number, in jackets of resplendent whiteness, superintend- 
ing the roasting of chickens impaled on a huge spit, stirring 
the gravies and sauces in copper vessels that shone like gold. 
And the oldest inhabitant, evoking in memory all the civic 
banquets that he had beheld at the Silver Lion, could truth- 
fully declare that never at any one time had he seen so much 
wood burning and so much food cooking. 

Combette, a bustling, wizened little man, came in from the 
street in a great state of excitement from all that he had seen 
and heard. His position as deputy-mayor gave him facilities 
for knowing what was going on. It was about half-past three 
o’clock when Mac Mahon had telegraphed Bazaine that the 
Crown Prince of Prussia was approaching Chalons, thus 
necessitating the withdrawal of the army to the places along 
the Belgian frontier, and further dispatches were also in 
preparation for the Minister of War, advising him of the pro- 
jected movement and explaining the terrible dangers of their 
position. It was uncertain whether or not the dispatch for 
Bazaine would get through, for communication with Metz 
had seemed to be interrupted for the past few days, but the 
second dispatch was another and more serious matter ; and 
lowering his voice almost to a whisper the apothecary repeated 
the words that he had heard uttered by an officer of rank : 
“If they get wind of this in Paris, our goose is cooked!” 
Everyone was aware of the unrelenting persistency with which 
the Empress and the Council of Ministers urged the advance 
of the army. Moreover, the confusion went on increasing 
from hour to hour, the most conflicting advices were continu- 
ally coming in as to the whereabouts of the German forces. 
Could it be possible that the Crown Prince was at Chalons ! 


THE DOWNFALL 


103 


What, then, were the troops that the 7th corps had encountered 
among the passes of the Argonne ? 

“ They have no information at staff headquarters,” con- 
tinued the little druggist, raising his arms above his head 
with a despairing gesture. “ Ah, what a mess we are in! 
But all will be well if the army retreats to-morrow.” Then, 
dropping public for private matters, the kind-hearted man 
said : “ Look here, my young friend, I am going to see what 
I can do for that foot of yours ; then we’ll give you some 
dinner and put you to bed in my apprentice’s little room, who 
has cleared out.” 

But Maurice was tormented by such an itching desire for 
further intelligence that he could neither eat nor sleep until 
he had carried into execution his original design of paying a 
visit to his old friend, Madame Desvallieres, over the way. He 
was surprised that he was not halted at the door, which, in the 
universal confusion, had been left wide open, without so much 
as a sentry to guard it. People were going out and coming 
in incessantly, military men and officers of the household, and 
the roar from the blazing kitchen seemed to rise and pervade 
the whole house. There was no light in the passage and on 
the staircase, however, and he had to grope his way up as best 
he might. On reaching the first floor he paused for a few 
seconds, his heart beating violently, before the door of the 
apartment that he knew contained the Emperor, but not a 
sound was to be heard in the room ; the stillness that reigned 
'there was as of death. Mounting the last flight he presented 
himself at the door of the servant’s room to which Madame 
Desvallieres had been consigned ; the old lady was at first ter- 
rified at sight of him. When she recognized him presently 
she said : 

“ Ah, my poor child, what a sad meeting is this ! I would 
cheerfully have surrendered my house to the Emperor, but the 
people he has about him have no sense of decency. They lay 
hands on everything, without so much as saying, ‘ By your 
leave,’ and I am afraid they will burn the house down with 
their great fires ! He, poor man, looks like a corpse, and such 
sadness in his face ” 

And when the young man took leave of her with a few mur- 
mured words of comfort she went with him to the door, and lean- 
ing over the banister : “ Look ! ” she softly said, “ you can see 
him from where you are. Ah ! we are all undone. Adieu, my 
child ! ” 


104 THE DOWNFALL 

Maurice remained planted like a statue on one of the steps 
of the dark staircase. Craning his neck and directing his 
glance through the glazed fanlight over the door of the apart- 
ment, he beheld a sight that was never to fade from his 
memory. 

In the bare and cheerless room, the conventional bourgeois 
“ parlor,” was the Emperor, seated at a table on which his 
plate was laid, lighted at either end by wax candles in great 
silver candelabra. Silent in the background stood two aides- 
de-camp with folded arms. The wine in the glass was untasted, 
the bread untouched, a breast of chicken was cooling on the 
plate. The Emperor did not stir ; he sat staring down at the 
cloth with those dim, lusterless, watery eyes that the young man 
remembered to have seen before at Rheims ; but he appeared 
more weary than then, and when, evidently at the cost of a 
great effort, he had raised a couple of mouthfuls to his lips, he 
impatiently pushed the remainder of the food from him with 
his hand. That was his dinner. His pale face was blanched 
with an expression of suffering endured in silence. 

As Maurice was passing the dining room on the floor be- 
neath, the door was suddenly thrown open, and through the 
glow of candles and the steam of smoking joints he caught a 
glimpse of a table of equerries, chamberlains, and aides-de- 
camp, engaged in devouring the Emperor’s game and poultry 
and drinking his champagne, amid a great hubbub of conversa- 
tion. Now that the marshal’s dispatch had been sent off, all 
these people were delighted to know that the retreat was as- 
sured. In a week they would be at Paris and could sleep be- 
tween clean sheets. 

Then, for the first time, Maurice suddenly became conscious 
of the terrible fatigue that was oppressing him like a physical 
burden ; there was no longer room for doubt, the whole army 
was about to fall back, and the best thing for him to do was 
to get some sleep while waiting for the 7th corps to pass. He 
made his way back across the square to the house of his friend 
Combette, where, like one in a dream, he ate some dinner, after 
which he was mistily conscious of someone dressing his foot 
and then conducting him upstairs to a bedroom. And then 
all was blackness and utter annihilation ; he slept a dreamless, 
unstirring sleep. But after an uncertain length of time — 
hours, days, centuries, he knew not — he gave a start and sat 
bolt upright in bed in the surrounding darkness. Where was 
be? What was that continuous rolling sound, like the rattling 


THE DOWNFALL 


105 

of thunder, that had aroused him from his slumber? His 
recollection suddenly returned to him ; he ran to the window 
to see what was going on. In the obscurity of the street 
beneath, where the night was usually so peaceful, the artillery 
was passing, horses, men, and guns, in interminable array, with 
a roar and clatter that made the lifeless houses quake and 
tremble. The abrupt vision filled him with unreasoning alarm. 
What time might it be ? The great bell in the Hotel de Ville 
struck four.* He was endeavoring to allay his uneasiness by 
assuring himself that it was simply the initial movement in the 
retreat that had been ordered the day previous, when, raising 
his eyes, he beheld a sight that gave him fresh cause for in- 
quietude : there was a light still in the corner window of the 
notary’s house opposite, and the shadow of the Emperor, 
drawn in dark profile on the curtain, appeared and disappeared 
at regularly spaced intervals. 

Maurice hastily slipped on his trousers preparatory to going 
down to the street, but just then Combette appeared at the 
door with a bed-candle in his hand, gesticulating wildly. 

“ I saw you from the square as I was coming home from the 
Mairie, and I came up to tell you the news. They have been 
keeping me out of my bed all this time ; would you believe it, 
for more than two hours the mayor and I have been busy 
attending to fresh requisitions. Yes, everything is upset 
again ; there has been another change of plans. Ah ! he 
knew what he was about, that officer did, who wanted to keep 
the folks in Paris from getting wind of matters ! ” 

He went on for a long time in broken, disjointed phrases, 
and when he had finished the young man, speechless, broken- 
hearted, saw it all. About midnight the Emperor had received 
a dispatch from the Minister of War in reply to the one that 
had been sent by the marshal. Its exact terms were not 
known, but an aide-de-camp at the Hotel de Ville had stated 
openly that the Empress and the Council declared there would 
be a revolution in Paris should the Emperor retrace his steps 
and abandon Bazaine. The dispatch, which evinced the ut- 
most ignorance as to the position of the German armies and 
the resources of the army of Chalons, advised, or rather or- 
dered, an immediate forward movement, regardless of all con- 
siderations, in spite of everything, with a heat and fury that 
seemed incredible. 

“ The Emperor sent for the marshal,” added the apothecary, 
“and they were closeted together for near an hour ; of course 


Io6 THE DOWNFALL ~ 

I am not in position to say what passed between them, but I 
am told by all the officers that there is to be no more retreating, 
and the advance to the Meuse is to be resumed at once. We 
have been requisitioning all the ovens in the city for the ist 
corps, which will come up to-morrow morning and take the 
place of the 12th, whose artillery you see at this moment 
starting for la Besace. The matter is decided for good this 
time ; you will smell powder before you are much older.” 

He ceased. He also was gazing at the lighted window over 
in the notary’s house. Then he went on in a low voice, as if 
talking to himself, with an expression on his face of reflective 
curiosity ; 

“ I wonder what they had to say to each other } It strikes 
one as a rather peculiar proceeding, all the same, to run away 
from a threatened danger at six in the evening, and at mid- 
night, when nothing has occurred to alter the situation, to 
rush headlong into the very self-same danger.” 

Below them in the street Maurice still heard the gun-car- 
riages rumbling and rattling over the stones of the little 
sleeping city, that ceaseless tramp of horse and man, that un- 
interrupted tide of humanity, pouring onward toward the 
Meuse, toward the unknown, terrible fate that the morrow had 
in store for them. And still upon the mean, cheap curtains of 
that bourgeois dwelling he beheld the shadow of the Emperor 
passing and repassing at regular intervals, the restless activity 
of the sick man, to whom his cares made sleep impossible, 
whose sole repose was motion, in whose ears was ever ringing 
that tramp of horses and men whom he was suffering to be 
sent forward to their death. A few brief hours, then, had 
sufficed ; the slaughter was decided on ; it was to be. What, 
indeed, could they have found to say to each other, that 
Emperor and that marshal, conscious, both of them, of the 
inevitable disaster that lay before them? Assured as they 
were at night of defeat, from their knowledge of the wretched 
condition the army would be in when the time should come 
for it to meet the enemy, how, knowing as they did that the 
peril was hourly becoming greater, could they have changed 
their mind in the morning? Certain it was that General de 
Palikao’s plan of a swift, bold dash on Montmedy, which 
seemed hazardous on the 23d and was, perhaps, still not im- 
practicable on the 25th, if conducted with veteran troops and 
a leader of ability, would on the 27th be an act of sheer mad- 
ness amid the divided counsels of the chiefs and the increas- 


THE DOWNFALL 


toy 

ing demoralization of the troops. This they both well knew ; 
why, then, did they obey those merciless drivers who were flog- 
i ging them onward in their irresolution why did they hearken 
\ to those furious passions that were spurring them forward ? 
\ The marshal’s, it might be said, was the temperament of the 
j soldier, whose duty is limited to obedience to his instructions, 
J great in its abnegation ; while the Emperor, who had ceased 
\ entirely to issue orders, was waiting on destiny. They were 
• called on to surrender their lives and the life of the army ; 

I they surrendered them. It was the accomplishment of a crime, 
j the black, abominable night that witnessed the murder of a 
1 nation, for thenceforth the army rested in the shadow of death ; 
V a hundred thousand men and more were sent forward to in- 
evitable destruction. 

While pursuing this train of thought Maurice was watching 
the shadow that still kept appearing and vanishing on the 
muslin of good Madame Desvallieres’ curtain, as if it felt the 
lash of the pitiless voice that came to it from Paris. Had the 
Empress that night desired the death of the father in order 
that the son might reign ? March ! forward ever ! with no 
look backward, through mud, through rain, to bitter death, 
that the final game of the agonizing empire may be played 
out, even to the last card. March ! march ! die a hero’s 
death on the piled corpses of your people, let the whole 
world gaze in awe-struck admiration, for the honor and glory 
of your name ! And doubtless the Emperor was marching to 
his death. Below, the fires in the kitchen flamed and flashed 
no longer ; equerries, aides-de-camp and chamberlains were 
slumbering, the whole house was wrapped in darkness, while 
ever the lone shade went and came unceasingly, accepting 
with resignation the sacrifice that was to be, amid the deafen- 
ing uproar of the 12th corps, that was defiling still through 
the black night. 

Maurice suddenly reflected that, if the advance was to be re- 
sumed, the 7th corps would not pass through Chene, and he 
beheld himself left behind, separated from his regiment, a de- 
serter from his post. His foot no longer pained him ; his 
friend’s dressing and a few hours of complete rest had allayed 
the inflammation. Combette gave him a pair of easy shoes of 
his own that were comfortable to his feet, and as soon as he 
had them on he wanted to be off, hoping that he might yet be 
able to overtake the io6th somewhere on the road between 
Chene and Vouziers. The apothepary labored vainly to dis- 


io8 


THE DOWNFALL 


suade him, and had almost made up his mind to putdiis horse 
in the gig and drive him over in person, trusting to fortune to 
befriend him in finding the regiment, when Fernand, the ap- 
prentice, appeared, alleging as an excuse for his absence that 
he had been to see his sister. The youth was a tall, tallow- 
faced individual, who looked as if he had not the spirit of a 
mouse ; the horse was quickly hitched to the carriage and he 
drove off with Maurice. It was not yet five o’clock ; the rain 
was pouring in torrents from a sky of inky blackness, and the 
dim carriage-lamps faintly illuminated the road and cast little 
fitful gleams of light across the streaming fields on either side, 
over which came mysterious sounds that made them pull up 
from time to time in the belief that the army was at hand. 

Jean, meantime, down there before Vouziers, had not been 
slumbering. Maurice had explained to him how the retreat 
was to be salvation to them all, and he was keeping watch, 
holding his men together and waiting for the order to move, 
which might come at any minute. About two o’clock, in the 
intense darkness that was dotted here and there by the red 
glow of the watch-fires, a great trampling of horses resounded 
through the camp ; it was the advance-guard of cavalry mov- 
ing off toward Balay and Quatre-Champs so as to observe the 
roads from Boult-aux-Bois and Croix-aux-Bois ; then an hour 
later the infantry and artillery also put themselves in motion, 
abandoning at last the positions of Chestre and Falaise that 
they had defended so persistently for two long days against an 
enemy who never showed himself. The sky had become over- 
cast, the darkness was profound, and one by one the regiments 
marched out in deepest silence, an array of phantoms stealing 
away into the bosom of the night. , Every heart beat joyfully, 
however, as if they were escaping from some treacherous pit- 
fall ; already in imagination the troops beheld themselves 
under the walls of Paris, where their revenge was awaiting 
them. 

Jean looked out into the thick blackness. The road was 
bordered with trees on either hand and, as far as he could see, 
appeared to lie between wide meadows. Presently the coun- 
try became rougher ; there was a succession of sharp rises and 
descents, and just as they were entering a village which he 
supposed to be Balay, two straggling rows of houses bordering 
the road, the dense cloud that had obscured the heavens burst 
in a deluge of rain. The men had received so many duckings 
within the past f^\y flays that they took this one" without a 


THE DOWNFALL 


109 


murmur, bowing their heads and plodding patiently onward ; 
but when they had left Balay behind them and were crossing 
a wide extent of level ground near Quatre-Champs a violent 
wind began to rise. Beyond Quatre-Champs, when they had 
fought their way upward to the wide plateau that extends in a 
dreary stretch of waste land as far as Noirval, the wind 
increased to a hurricane and the driving rain stung their faces. 
There it was that the order, proceeding from the head of the 
column and re-echoed down the line, brought the regiments one 
after another to a halt, and the entire 7th corps, thirty-odd 
thousand men, found itself once more reunited in the mud and 
rain of the gray dawn. What was the matter ? Why were 
they halted there ? An uneasy feeling was already beginning 
to pervade the ranks ; it was asserted in some quarters that 
there had been a change of orders. The men had been 
brought to ordered arms and forbidden to leave the ranks or 
sit down. At times the wind swept over the elevated plateau 
with such violence that they had to press closely to one another 
to keep from being carried off their feet. The rain blinded 
them and trickled in ice-cold streams beneath their collars 
down their backs. And two hours passed, a period of waiting 
that seemed as if it would never end, for what purpose no one 
could say, in an agony of expectancy that chilled the hearts of 
all. 

As the daylight increased Jean made an attempt to discern 
where they were. Someone had shown him where the Chene 
road lay off to the northwest, passing over a hill beyond 
Quatre-Champs. Why had they turned to the right instead 
of to the left ? Another object of interest to him was the general 
and his staff, who had established themselves at the Converserie, 
a farm on the edge of the plateau. There seemed to be a heated 
discussion going on ; officers were going and coming and the 
conversation was carried on with much gesticulation. What 
could they be waiting for ? nothing was coming that way. The 
plateau formed a sort of amphitheater, broad expanses of 
stubble that were commanded to the north and east by wooded 
heights ; to the south were thick woods, while to the west an 
opening afforded a glimpse of the valley of the Aisne with the 
little white houses of Vouziers. Below the Converserie rose 
the slated steeple of Quatre-Champs church, looming dimly 
through the furious storm, which seemed as if it would sweep 
away bodily the few poor moss-grown cottages of the village. 
As Jean’s glance wandered down the ascending road he became 


I lO 


THE DOWNFALL 


conscious of a doctor’s gig coming up at a sharp trot along the 
stony road, that was now the bed of a rapid torrent. 

It was Maurice, who, at a turn in the road, from the hill that 
lay beyond the valley, had finally discerned the 7th corps. 
For two hours he had been wandering about the country, 
thanks to the stupidity of a peasant who had misdirected him 
and the sullen ill-will of his driver, whom fear of the Prussians 
had almost deprived of his wits. As soon as he reached the 
farmhouse he leaped from the gig and had no further trouble 
in finding the regiment. 

Jean addressed him in amazement: 

“What, is it you ? What is the meaning of this ? I thought 
you were to wait until we came along.” 

Maurice’s tone and manner told of his rage and sorrow. 

“Ah, yes ! we are no longer going in that direction ; it is 
down yonder we are to go, to get ourselves knocked in the 
head, all of us ! ” 

“ Very well,” said the other presently, with a very white 
face. “ We will die together, at all events.” 

The two men met, as they had parted, with an embrace. In 
the drenching rain that still beat down as pitilessly as ever, the 
humble private resumed his place in the ranks, while the cor- 
poral, in his streaming garments, never murmured as he gave 
him the example of what a soldier should be. 

And now the tidings became more definite and spread 
among the men ; they were no longer retreating on Paris ; the 
advance to the Meuse was again the order of the day. An 
aide-de-camp had brought to the 7th corps instructions from 
the marshal to go and encamp at Nonart ; the 5th was to take 
the direction of Beauclair, where it would be the right wing of 
the army, while the ist was to move up to Chene and relieve 
the 1 2th, then on the march to la Besace on the extreme left. 
And the reason why more than thirty thousand men had been 
kept waiting there at ordered arms, for nearly three hours in 
the midst of a blinding storm, was that General Douay, in the 
deplorable confusion incident on this new change of front, 
was alarmed for the safety of the train that had been sent for- 
ward the day before toward Chagny ; the delay was necessary 
to give the several divisions time to close up. In the confusion 
of all these conflicting movements it was said that the 12th 
corps train had blocked the road at Chene, thus cutting off 
that of the 7th. On the other hand, an important part of the 
materiel^ all the forges of the artillery, had mistaken their road 


THE DOVVNEALL 


lit 


and strayed off in the direction of Terron ; they were now 
trying to find their way back by the Vonziers road, where they 
were certain to fall into the hands of the Germans. Never 
was there such utter confusion, never was anxiety so intense. 

A feeling of bitterest discouragement took possession of 
the troops. Many of them in their despair would have pre- 
ferred to seat themselves on their knapsacks, in the midst of 
that sodden, wind-swept plain, and wait for death to come to 
them. They reviled their leaders and loaded them with in- 
sult : ah ! famous leaders, they ; brainless boobies, undoing at 
night what they had done in the morning, idling and loafing 
when there was no enemy in sight, and taking to their heels as 
soon as he showed his face ! Each minute added to the de- 
moralization that was already rife, making of that army a rab- 
ble, without faith or hope, without discipline, a herd that tbeir 
chiefs were conducting to the shambles by ways of which they 
themselves were ignorant. Down in the direction of Vouziers 
the sound of musketry was heard ; shots were being exchanged 
between the rear-guard of the 7th corps and the German skir- 
mishers ; and now every eye was turned upon the valley of the 
Aisne, where volumes of dense black smoke were whirling up- 
ward toward the sky from which the clouds had suddenly 
been swept away ; they all knew it was the village of Falaise 
burning, fired by the uhlans. Every man felt his blood boil 
in his veins; so the Prussians were there at last ; they had sat 
and waited two days for them to come up, and then had turned 
and fled. The most ignorant among the men had felt their 
cheeks tingle for very shame as, in their dull way, they recog- 
nized the idiocy that had prompted that enormous blunder, 
that imbecile delay, that trap into which they had walked 
blindfolded; the light cavalry of the IVth army feinting in front 
of Bordas’ brigade and halting and neutralizing, one by one, 
the several corps of the army of Chalons, solely to give the 
Crown Prince time to hasten up with the II Id army. And now, 
thanks to the marshal’s complete and astounding ignorance 
as to the identity of the troops he had before him, the junc- 
tion was accomplished, and the 5th and 7th corps were to be 
roughly handled, with the constant menace of disaster over- 
shadowing them. 

Maurice’s eyes were bent on the horizon, where it was 
reddened with the flames of burning Falaise. They had one 
consolation, however : the train that had been believed to be 
lost came crawling along out of the Chene road. Without 


112 


THE DOWNFALL 


delay the 2d division put itself in motion and struck out 
across the forest for Boult-aux-Bois, the 3d took post on the 
heights of Belleville to the left in order to keep an eye to the 
communications, while the ist remained at Quatre-Champs to 
wait for the coming up of the train and guard its countless 
wagons. Just then the rain began to come down again with 
increased violence, and as the io6th moved off th^ plateau, 
resuming the march that should have never been, toward the 
Meuse, toward the unknown, Maurice thought he beheld 
again his vision of the night : the shadow of the Emperor, in- 
cessantly appearing and vanishing, so sad, so pitiful a sight, 
on the white curtain of good old Madame Desvallieres. Ah ! 
that doomed army, that army of despair, that was being driven 
forward to inevitable destruction for the salvation of a 
dynasty ! March, march, onward ever, with no look behind, 
through mud, through rain, to the bitter end ! 


VI. 

‘‘'T''HUNDER ! ” Chouteau ejaculated the following morning 
X when he awoke, chilled and with aching bones, under the 
tent, “ I wouldn’t mind having a bouillon with plenty of 
meat in it.” 

At Boult-aux-Bois, where they were now encamped, the only 
ration issued to the men the night before had been an ex- 
tremely slender one of potatoes ; the commissariat was daily 
more and more distracted and disorganized by the everlasting 
marches and countermarches, never reaching the designated 
points of rendezvous in time to meet the troops. As for the 
herds, no one had the faintest idea where they might be upon 
the crowded roads, and famine was staring the army in the face. 

Loubet stretched himself and plaintively replied : 

“ A\\, fichtre, yes ! — No more roast goose for us now.” 

The squad was out of sorts and sulky. Men couldn’t be 
expected to be lively on an empty stomach. And then there 
was the rain that poured down incessantly, and the mud in 
which they had to make their beds. 

Observing Pache make the sign of the cross after mumbling 
his morning prayer, Chouteau captiously growled : 

“ Ask that good God of yours, if he is good for anything, 
to send us down a couple of sausages and a mug of beer 
apiece.” 


THE DOWNFALL 


113 

“ Ah, if we only had a good big loaf of bread ! sighed 
Lapoulle, whose ravenous appetite made hunger a more griev- 
ous affliction to him than to the others. 

But Lieutenant Rochas, passing by just then, made them be 
silent. It was scandalous, never to think of anything but 
their stomachs ! When he was hungry he tightened up the 
buckle of his trousers. Now that things were becoming de- 
cidedly squally and the popping of rifles was to be heard oc- 
casionally in the distance, he had recovered all his old serene 
confidence : it was all plain enough, now ; the Prussians were 
there — well, all they had to do was, go out and lick ’ em. 
And he gave a significant shrug of the shoulders, standing be- 
hind Captain Beaudoin, the very young man, as he called him, 
with his pale face and pursed-up lips, whom the loss of his 
baggage had afflicted so grievously that he had even ceased 
to fume and scold. A man might get along without eating, at 
a pinch, but that he could not change his linen was a circum- 
stance productive of sorrow and anger. 

Maurice awoke to a sensation of despondency and physical 
discomfort. Thanks to his easy shoes the inflammation in his 
foot had gone down, but the drenching he had received the 
day before, from the effects of which his greatcoat seemed to 
weigh a ton, had left him with a distinct and separate ache in 
every bone of his body. When he was sent to the spring to 
get water for the coffee he took a survey of the plain on the 
edge of which Boult-aux-Bois is situated : forests rise to the 
west and north, and there is a hill crowned by the hamlet of 
Belleville, while, over to the east, Buzancy way, there is a 
broad, level expanse, stretching far as the eye can see, with an 
occasional shallow depression concealing a small cluster of 
cottages. Was it from that direction that they were to expect 
the enemy ? As he was returning from the stream with his 
bucket filled with water, the father of a family of wretched 
peasants hailed him from the door of his hovel, and asked him 
if the soldiers were this time going to stay and defend them. 
In the confusion of conflicting orders the 5th corps had 
already traversed the region no less than three times. The 
sound of cannonading had reached them the day before from 
the direction of Bar ; the Prussians could not Ue more than a 
couple of leagues away. And when Maurice made answer to 
• the poor folks that doubtless the 7th corps would also be 
called away after a time, their tears flowed afresh. Then they 
were to be abandoned to the enemy, and the soldiers had not 


THE DOWNFALL 


II4 

come there to fight, whom they saw constantly vanishing and 
reappearing, always on the run ? 

“Those who like theirs sweet,” observed Loubet, as he 
poured the coffee, “ have only to stick their thumb in it and 
wait for it to melt.” 

Not a man of them smiled. It was too bad, all the same, to 
have to drink their coffee without sugar; and then, too, if 
they only had some biscuit ! Most of them had devoured 
what eatables they had in their knapsacks, to the very last 
crumb, to while away their time of waiting, the day before, on 
the plateau of Quatre-Champs. Among them, however, the 
members of the squad managed to collect a dozen potatoes, 
which they shared equally. 

Maurice, who began to feel a twinging sensation in his 
stomach, uttered a regretful cry : 

“ If I had known of this I would have bought some bread 
at Chene.” 

Jean listened in silence. He had had a dispute with Chou- 
teau that morning, who, on being ordered to go for firewood, 
had insolently refused, alleging that it was not his turn. Now 
that everything was so rapidly going to the dogs, insubordina- 
tion among the men had increased to such a point that those 
in authority no longer ventured to reprimand them, and Jean, 
with his sober good sense and pacific disposition, saw that if 
he would preserve his influence with his squad he must keep 
the corporal in the background as far as possible. For this 
reason he was hail-fellow-well-met with his men, who could 
not fail to see what a treasure they had in a man of his experi- 
ence, for if those committed to his care did not always have 
all they wanted to eat, they had, at all events, not suffered 
from hunger, as had been the case with so many others. But 
he was touched by the sight of Maurice’s suffering. He saw 
that he was losing strength, and looked at him anxiously, ask- 
ing himself how that delicate young man would ever manage 
to sustain the privations of that horrible campaign. 

When Jean heard Maurice bewail the lack of bread he arose 
quietly, went to his knapsack, and, returning, slipped a biscuit 
into the other’s hand. 

“ Here ! don’t let the others see it ; I have not enough to go 
round.” 

“ But what will you do ? ” asked the young man, deeply af- 
fected. 

“ Oh, don’t be alarmed about me — I have two left.” 


THE DOIVNFALL 


15 


It was true ; he had carefully put aside three biscuits, in 
case there should be a fight, knowing that men are often 
hungry on the battlefield. And then, besides, he had just 
eaten a potato ; that would be sufficient for him. Perhaps 
something would turn up later on. 

About ten o’clock the 7th corps made a fresh start. The 
marshal’s first intention had been to direct it by way of Bu- 
zancy upon Stenay, where it would have passed the Meuse, 
but the Prussians, outmarching the army of Chalons, were 
already in Stenay, and were even reported to be at Buzancy. 
Crowded back in this manner to the northward, the 7th corps 
had received orders to move to la Besace, some twelve or fif- 
teen miles from Boult-aux-Bois, whence, on the next day, they 
would proceed to pass the Meuse at Mouzon. The start was 
made in a very sulky humor ; the men, with empty stomachs 
and bodies unrefreshed by repose, unnerved, mentally and 
physically, by the experience of the past few days, vented their 
dissatisfaction by growling and grumbling, while the officers, 
without a spark of their usual cheerful gayety, with a vague 
sense of impending disaster awaiting them at the end of their 
march, taxed the dilatoriness of their chiefs, and reproached 
them for not going to the assistance of the 5th corps at Bu- 
zancy, where the sound of artillery-firing had been heard. 
That corps, too, was on the retreat, making its way toward 
Nonart, while the 12th was even then leaving la Besace for 
Mouzon, and the istwas directing its course toward Raucourt. 
It was like nothing so much as the passage of a drove of panic- 
stricken cattle, with the dogs worrying them and snapping at 
their heels — a wild stampede toward the Meuse. 

When, in the ouPstreaming torrent of the three divisions 
that striped the plain with columns of marching men, the io6th 
left Boult-aux-Bois in the rear of the cavalry and artillery, the 
sky was again overspread with a pall of dull leaden clouds that 
further lowered the spirits of the soldiers. Its route was along 
the Buzancy highway, planted on either side with rows of mag- 
nificent poplars. When they reached Germond, a village 
where there was a steaming manure-heap before every one of 
the doors that lined the two sides of the straggling .street, the 
sobbing women came to their thresholds with their little chil- 
dren in their arm.s, and held them out to the passing troops, as 
if begging the men to take them with them. There was not a 
mouthful of bread to be had in all the hamlet, nor even a 
potato. After that, the regiment, instead of keeping straight 


ii6 


THE DOWNFALL 


on toward Buzancy, turned to the left and made for Authe, 
and when the men turned their eyes across the plain and be- 
held upon the hilltop Belleville, through which they had passed 
the day before, the fact that they were retracing their steps 
was impressed more vividly on their consciousness. 

“ Heavens and earth ! ” growled Chouteau, “ do they take 
us for tops ? ” 

And Loubet chimed in : 

“Those cheap-John generals of ours are all at sea again ! 
They must think that men’s legs are cheap.” 

The anger and disgust were general. It was not right to 
make men suffer like that, just for the fun of walking them up 
and down the country. They were advancing in column across 
the naked plain in two files occupying the sides of the road, 
leaving a free central space in which the officers could move 
to and fro and keep an eye on their men, but it was not the 
same now as it had been in Champagne after they left Rheims, 
a march of song and jollity, when they tramped along gayly 
and the knapsack was like a feather to their shoulders, in the 
belief that soon they would come up with the Prussians and 
give them a sound drubbing ; now they were dragging them- 
selves wearily forward in angry silence, cursing the musket 
that galled their shoulder and the equipments that seemed to 
weigh them to the ground, their faith in their leaders gone, 
and possessed by such bitterness of despair that they only went 
forward as does a file of manacled galley-slaves, in terror 
of the lash. The wretched army had begun to ascend its 
Calvary. 

Maurice, however, within the last few minutes had made a 
discovery that interested him greatly. To their left was a 
range of hills that rose one above another as they receded 
from the road, and from the skirt of a little wood, far up on 
the mountain-side, he had seen a horseman emerge. Then 
another appeared, and then still another. There they stood, 
all three of them, without sign of life, apparently no larger 
than a man’s hand and looking like delicately fashioned toys. 
He thought they were probably part of a detachment of our 
hussars out on a reconnoissance, when all at once he was sur- 
prised to behold little points of light flashing from their 
shoulders, doubtless the reflection of the sunlight from epau- 
lets of brass. 

“ Look there ! ” he said, nudging Jean, who was marching 
at his side, “ Uhlans ! ” 


THE DOWNFALL 


117 

The corporal stared with all his eyes. ‘‘ They, uhlans ! ” 

They were indeed uhlans, the first Prussians that the io6th 
had set eyes on. They had been in the field nearly six weeks 
now, and in all that time not only had they never smelt powder, 
but had never even seen an enemy. The news spread through 
the ranks, and every head was turned to look at them. Not 
such bad-looking fellows, those uhlans, after all. 

“ One of them looks like a jolly little fat fellow,” Loubet 
remarked. 

But presently an entire squadron came out and showed 
itself on a plateau to the left of the little wood, and at sight 
of the threatening demonstration the column halted. An 
officer came riding up with orders, and the io6th moved off a 
little and took position on the bank of a small stream behind a 
clump of trees. The artillery had come hurrying back from 
the front on a gallop and taken possession of a low, rounded 
hill. For near two hours they remained there thus in line of 
battle without the occurrence of anything further ; the body 
of hostile cavalry remained motionless in the distance, and 
finally, concluding that they were only wasting time that was 
valuable, the officers set the column moving again. 

“Ah well,” Jean murmured regretfully, “ we are not booked 
for it this time.” 

Maurice, too, had felt his finger-tips tingling with the desire 
to have just one shot. He kept harping on the theme of the 
mistake they had made the day before in not going to the 
support of the 5th corps. If the Prussians had not made their 
attack yet, it must be because their infantry had not got up in 
sufficient strength, whence it was evident that their display of 
cavalry in the distance was made with no other end than to 
harass us and check the advance of our corps. We had again 
fallen into the trap set for us, and thenceforth the regiment 
was constantly greeted with the sight of uhlans popping up 
on its left flank wherever the ground was favorable for them, 
tracking it like sleuthhounds, disappearing behind a farm- 
house only to reappear at the corner of a wood. 

It eventually produced a disheartening effect on the troops 
to see that cordon closing in on them in the distance and en- 
veloping them as in the meshes of some gigantic, invisible net. 
Even Pache and Lapoulle had an opinion on the subject. 

“ It is beginning to be tiresome ! ” they said. “ It would be 
a comfort to send them our compliments in the shape of a, 
musket-ball ! ” 


ii8 


THE DOWNFALL 


But they kept toiling wearily onward on their tired feet, that 
seemed to them as if they were of lead. In the distress and 
suffering of that day’s march there was ever present to all the 
undefined sensation of the proximity of the enemy, drawing in 
on them from every quarter, just as we are conscious of the 
coming storm before we have seen a cloud on the horizon. 
Instructions were given the rear-guard to use severe measures, 
if necessary, to keep the column well closed up, but there was 
not much straggling, aware as everyone was that the Prussians 
were close in our rear, and ready to snap up every unfortunate 
that they could lay hands on. Their infantry was coming up 
with the rapidity of the whirlwind, making its twenty-five miles 
a day, while the French regiments, in their demoralized condi- 
tion, seemed in comparison to be marking time. 

At Authe the weather cleared, and Maurice, taking his bear- 
ings by the position of the sun, noticed that instead of bearing 
off toward Chene, which lay three good leagues from where 
they were, they had turned and were moving directly eastward. 
It was two o’clock ; the men, after shivering in the rain for 
two days, were now suffering from the intense heat. The road 
ascended, with long sweeping curves, through a region of utter 
desolation : not a house, not a living being, the only relief to 
the dreariness of the waste lands an occasional little somber 
wood ; and the oppressive silence communicated itself to the 
men, who toiled onward with drooping heads, bathed in per- 
spiration. At last Saint-Pierremont appeared before them, a 
few empty houses on a small elevation. They did not pass 
through the village. Maurice observed that here they made 
a sudden wheel to the left, resuming their northern course, 
toward la Besace. He now understood the route* that had 
been adopted in their attempt to reach Mouzon ahead of the 
Prussians ; but would they succeed, with such weary, demor- 
alized troops ? At Saint-Pierremont the three uhlans had 
shown themselves again, at a turn in the road leading to 
Buzancy, and just as the rear-guard was leaving the village a 
battery was unmasked and a few shells came tumbling among 
them, without doing any injury, however. No response was 
attempted, and the march was continued with constantly in- 
creasing effort. 

From Saint-Pierremont to la Besace the distance is three 
good leagues, and when Maurice imparted that information to 
Jean the latter made a gesture of discouragement : the men 
would never be able to accomplish it ; they showed it by their 


THE DOWNFALL 


119 


shortness of breath, by their haggard faces. The road con- 
tinued to ascend, between gently sloping hills on either side 
that were gradually drawing closer together. The condition 
of the men necessitated a halt, but the only effect of their brief 
repose was to increa.se the stiffness of their benumbed limbs, 
and when the order was given to march the state of affairs was 
worse than it had been before ; the regiments made no prog- 
ress, men were everywhere falling in the ranks. Jean, notic- 
ing Maurice’s pallid face and glassy eyes, infringed on what 
was his usual custom and conversed, endeavoring by his 
volubility to divert the other’s attention and keep him awake 
as he moved automatically forward, unconscious of his 
actions. 

“ Your sister lives in Sedan, you say ; perhaps we shall be 
there before long.” 

“ What, at Sedan ? Never! You must be crazy; it don’t 
lie in our way.” • 

“ Is your sister young ? ” 

“ Just my age ; you know I told you we are twins.” 

“ Is she like you ? ” 

“Yes, she is fair-haired, too ; and oh! such pretty curling 
hair ! She is a mite of a woman, with a little thin face, not 
one of your noisy, flashy hoydens, ah, no ! — Dear Henriette !” 

“ You love her very dearly ! ” 

“Yes, yes ” 

There was silence between them after that, and Jean, glanc- 
ing at Maurice, saw that his eyes were closing and he was 
about to fall. 

“ Hallo there, old fellow ! Come, confound it all, brace 
up ! Let me take your gun a moment ; that will give you a 
chance to rest. They can’t have the cruelty to make us march 
any further to-day ! we shall leave half our men by the road- 
side.” 

At that moment he caught sight of Osches lying straight 
ahead of them, its few poor hovels climbing in straggling 
fashion up the hillside, and the yellow church, embowered in 
trees, looking down on them from its perch upon the summit. 

“ There’s where we shall rest, for certain.” 

He had guessed aright ; General Douay saw the exhausted 
condition of the troops, and was convinced that it would be 
useless to attempt to reach la Besace that day. What particu- 
larly influenced his determination, however, was the arrival of 
the train, that ill-starred train that had been trailing in his 


120 


THE DOWHEALL 


rear since they left Rheims, and of which the nine long miles 
of vehicles and animals had so terribly impeded his move- 
ments. He had given instructions from Quatre-Champs to 
direct it straight on Saint-Pierremont, and it was not until 
Osches that the teams came up with the corps, in such a 
state of exhaustion that the horses refused to stir. It was 
now five o’clock ; the general, not liking the prospect of at- 
tempting the pass of Stonne at that late hour, determined to 
take the responsibility of abridging the task assigned them by 
the marshal. The corps was halted and proceeded to encamp ; 
the train below in the meadows, guarded by a division, while 
the artillery took position on the hills to the rear, and the 
brigade detailed to act as rear-guard on the morrow rested on 
a height facing Saint-Pierremont. The other division, which 
included Bourgain-Desfeuilles’ brigade, bivouacked on a wide 
plateau, bordered by an oak wood, behind the church. 
There was such confusion in locating the bodies of troops 
that it was dark before the io6th could move into its position 
at the edge of the wood. 

“Z///.'” said Chouteau in a furious rage, “no eating for 
me ; I want to sleep ! ” 

And that was the -cry of all ; they were overcome with 
fatigue. Many of them lacked strength and courage to erect 
their tents, but dropping where they stood, at once fell fast 
asleep on the bare ground. In order to eat, moreover, rations 
would have been necessary, and the commissary wagons, 
which were waiting for the 7th corps to come to them at la 
Besace, could not well be at Osches at the same time. In the 
universal relaxation of order and system even the customary 
corporal’s call was omitted : it was everyone for himself. 
There were to be no more issues of rations from that time 
forth ; the soldiers were to subsist on the provisions they were 
supposed to carry in their knapsacks, and that evening the 
sacks were empty ; few indeed were those who could muster 
a crust of bread or some crumbs of the abundance in which 
they had been living at Vouziers of late. There was coffee, 
and those who were not too tired made and drank it without 
sugar. ^ 

When Jean thought to make a division of his wealth by eat- 
ing one of his biscuits himself and giving the other to Maurice, 
he discovered that the latter was sound asleep. He thought 
at first he would awake him, but changed his] mind and stoic- 
ally replaced the biscuits in his sack, concealing them with as 


TPtE DOWJ^I^ALL 


12t 

much caution as if they had been bags of gold ; he could get 
along with coffee, like the rest of the boys. He had insisted 
on having the tent put up, and they were all stretched on the 
ground beneath its shelter when Loubet returned from a 
foraging expedition, bringing in some carrots that he had 
found in a neighboring’field. As there was no fire to cook them 
by they munched them raw, but the vegetables only served to 
aggravate their hunger, and they made Pache ill. 

“ No, no ; let him sleep,” said Jean to Chouteau, who was 
shaking Maurice to wake him and give him his share. 

“Ah,” Lapoulle broke in, “we shall be at Angouleme to- 
morrow, and then we’ll have some bread. I had a cousin in 
the army once, who was stationed at Angouleme. Nice garri- 
son, that.” ^ 

They all looked surprised, and Chouteau exclaimed : 

“ Angouleme — what are you talking about ! Just listen to 
the bloody fool, saying he is at Angouleme ! ” 

It was impossible to extract any explanation from Lapoulle. 
He had insisted that morning that the uhlans that they sighted 
were some of Bazaine’s troops. 

Then darkness descended on the camp, black as ink, silent 
as death. Notwithstanding the coolness of the night air the 
men had not been permitted to make fires ; the Prussians 
were known to be only a few miles away, and it would 
not do to put them on the alert ; orders even were transmitted 
in a hushed voice. The officers had notified their men before 
retiring that the start would be made at about four in the morn- 
ing, in order that they might have all the rest possible, and all 
had hastened to turn in and were sleeping greedily, forgetful 
of their troubles. Above the scattered camps the deep respi- 
ration of all those slumbering crowds, rising upon the stillness 
of the night, was like the long-drawn breathing of old Mother 
Earth. 

Suddenly a shot rang out in the darkness and aroused the 
sleepers. It was about three o’clock, and the obscurity was 
profound. Immediately everyone was on foot, the alarm 
spread through the camp ; it was supposed the Prussians were 
attacking. It was only Loubet who, unable to sleep longer, 
had taken it in his head to make a foray into the oak-wood, 
which he thought gave promise of rabbits : what a jolly good 
lark it would be if he could bring in a pair of nice rabbits for 
the comrades’ breakfast ! But as he was looking about for a 
favorable place in which to conceal himself, he heard the 


122 


THE DOWNFALL 


sound of voices and the snappiiig of dry branches under 
heavy footsteps; men were coming toward him; he took 
alarm and discharged his piece, believing the Prussians were 
at hand. Maurice, Jean, and others came running up in haste, 
when a hoarse voice made itself heard : 

“ For God’s sake, don’t shoot ! ” 

And there at the edge of the wood stood a tall, lanky man, 
whose thick, bristling beard they could just distinguish in the 
darkness. He wore a gray blouse, confined at the waist by a 
red belt, and carried a musket slung by a strap over his shoul- 
der. He hurriedly explained that he was French, a sergeant 
of francs-tireurs, and had come with two of his men from the 
wood of Dieulet, bringing important information for the 
generaf. 

“ Hallo there, Cabasse ! Ducat ! ” he shouted, turning his 
head, “ hallo ! you infernal poltroons, come here ! ” 

The men were evidently badly scared, but they came for- 
ward. Ducat, short and fat, with a pale face and scanty hair ; 
Cabasse short and lean, with a black face and a long nose not 
much thicker than a knife-blade. 

Meantime Maurice had stepped up and taken a closer look 
at the sergeant ; he finally asked him: 

“ Tell me, are you not Guillaume Sambuc, of Remilly ?” 

And when the man hesitatingly answered in the affirmative 
Maurice recoiled a step or two, for this Sambuc had the repu- 
tation of being a particularly hard case, the worthy son of a 
family of woodcutters who had all gone to the bad, the 
drunken fathei* being found one night lying by the roadside 
with his throat cut, the mother and daughter, who lived by 
begging and stealing, having disappeared, most likely, in the 
.seclusion of some penitentiary. He, William, did a little in the 
poaching and smuggling lines, and only one of that litter of 
wolves’ whelps had grown up to be an honest man, and that 
was Prosper, the hussar, who had gone to work on a farm be- 
fore he was conscripted, because he hated the life of the forest. 

“ I saw your brother at Vouziers,” Maurice continued ; “ he 
is well.” 

Sambuc made no reply. To end the situation he said: 

“ Take me to the general. Tell him that the francs-tireurs 
of the wood of Dieulet have something important to say to 
him.” 

On the way back to the camp Maurice reflected on those 
free companies that had excited such great expectations at the 


THE DOWNFALL 


123 


time of their formation, and had since been the object of such 
bitter denunciation throughout the country, d'heir professed 
purpose was to wage a sort of guerilla warfare, lying in am- 
bush behind hedges, harassing the enemy, picking off his 
sentinels, holding the woods, from which not a Prussian was 
to emerge alive; while the truth of the matter was that they 
had made themselves the terror of the peasantr}^ whom they 
failed utterly to protect and whose fields they devastated. 
Every ne’er-do-well who hated the restraints of the regular 
service made haste to join their ranks, well pleased with the 
chance that exempted him from discipline and enabled him to 
lead the life of a tramp, tippling in pothouses and sleeping by 
the roadside at his own sweet will. Some of the companies 
were recruited from the very worst material imaginable. 

•• riallo there, Cabasse ! Ducat !” Sambuc was constantly 
repeating, turning to his henchmen at every step he took, 
“ Come along, will you, you snails!” 

Maurice was as little charmed with the two men as with their 
leader. Cabasse, the little lean fellow, was a native of Toulon, 
had served as waiter in a cafe at Marseilles, had failed at Sedan 
as a broker in southern produce, and finally had brought up in a 
police-court, where it came near going hard with him, in con- 
nection with a robbery of which the details were suppressed. 
Ducat, the little fat man, quondam huissier at Blainville, where 
he had been forced to sell out his business on account of a 
malodorous woman scrape, had recently been brought face to 
face with the court of assizes for an indiscretion of a similar 
nature at Raucourt, where he was accountant in a factory. 
The latter quoted Latin in his conversation, while the other 
could scarcely read, but the two were well mated, as unpre- 
possessing a pair as one could expect to meet in a summer’s 
day. 

The camp was already astir ; Jean and Maurice took the 
francs-tireurs to Captain Beaudoin, who conducted them to 
the quarters of Colonel Vineuil. The colonel attempted to 
question them, but Samibuc, intrenching himself in his dignity, 
refused to speak to anyone except the general. Now Bour- 
gain-Desfeuilles had taken up his quarters that night with the 
cure of Osches, and just then appeared, rubbing his eyes, in 
the doorway of the parsonage ; he was in a horribly bad 
humor at his slumbers having been thus prematurely tut short, 
and the prospect that he saw before him of another day of 
famine and fatigue ; hence his reception of the men who were 


124 


THE DOWNFALL 


brouglit before him was not exactly lamblike. Who were they? 
Whence did they come ? What did they want ? Ah, some of 
those francs-tireurs gentlemen — eh ! Same thing as skulkers 
and riff-raff ! 

“ General,” Sambuc replied, without allowing himself to be 
disconcerted, “ we and our comrades are stationed in the 
woods of Dieulet ” 

“ The woods of Dieulet — where’s that ? ” 

^‘Between Stenay and Mouzon, General.” 

“ What do I know of your Stenay and Mouzon ? Do you 
expect me to be familiar with all these strange names ? ” 

The colonel was distressed by his chief’s display of igno- 
rance ; he hastily interfered to remind him that Stenay and 
Mouzon were on the Meuse, and that, as the Germans had 
occupied the former of those towns, the army was about to 
attempt the passage of the river at the other, which was situ- 
ated more to the northward. 

So you see. General,” Sambuc continued, “ we’ve come 
to tell you that the woods of Dieulet are alive with Prussians. 
There was an engagement yesterday as the 5th corps was 
leaving Bois-Ies-Dames, somewhere about Nonart ” 

“ What, yesterday ? There was fighting yesterday ?” 

Yes, General, the 5th corps was engaged as it was fall- 
ing back ; it must have been at Beaumont last night. So, 
while some of us hurried off to report to it the movements of 
the enemy, we thought it best to come and let you know how 
matters stood, so that you might go to its assistance, for it 
will certainly have sixty thousand men to deal with in the 
morning.” 

General Bourgain-Desfeuilles gave a contemptuous shrug of 
his shoulders. 

“ Sixty thousand men ! Why the devil don’t you call it a 
hundred thousand at once ? You were dreaming, young man ; 
your fright has made you see double. It is impossible there 
should be- sixty thousand Germans so near us without our 
knowing it.” 

And so he went on. It was to no purpose that Sambuc 
appealed to Ducat and Cabasse to confirm his state- 
ment. 

“ We saw the guns,” the Provencal declared ; “ and those 
chaps must be crazy to take them through the forest, where 
the rains of the past few days have left the roads in such a 
state that they sink in the mud up to the hubs,” 


THE DOWNFALL 125 

“ They have someone to guide them, for certain,” said the 
ex-bailiff. 

Since leaving Vouziers the general had stoutly refused to 
attach any further credit to reports of the junction of the two 
German armies which, as he said, they had been trying to 
stuff down his throat. He did not even consider it worth his 
while to send the francs-tireurs before his corps commander, to 
whom the partisans supposed, all along, that they were talking; 
if“ they should attempt to listen to all the yarns that were 
brought them by tramps and peasants, they would have their 
hands full and be driven from pillar to post without ever 
advancing a step. He directed the three men to remain with 
the column, however, since they were acquainted with the 
country. 

“They are good fellows, all the same,” Jean said to Mau- 
rice, as they were returning to fold the tent, “ to have tramped 
three leagues across lots to let us know.” 

The young man agreed with him and commended their 
action, knowing as he did the country, and deeply alarmed to 
hear that the Prussians were in Dieulet forest and moving on 
Sommanthe and Beaumont. He had flung himself down by 
the roadside, exhausted before the march had commenced, 
with a sorrowing heart and an empty stomach, at the dawning 
of that day which he felt was to be so disastrous for them all. 
Distressed to see him looking so pale, the corporal affection- 
ately asked him : 

“ Are you feeling so badly still ? What is it ? Does your 
foot pain you ? ” 

Maurice shook his head. His foot had ceased to trouble 
him, thanks to the big shoes. 

“ Then you are hungry.” And Jean, seeing that he did not 
answer, took from his knapsack one of the two remaining bis- 
cuits, and with a falsehood for which he may be forgiven : 
“ Here, take it ; I kept your share for you. I ate mine a 
while ago.” 

Day was breaking when the 7th corps marched out of Osches 
en route for Mouzon by way of la Besace, where they should 
have bivouacked. The train, cause of so many woes, had been 
sent on ahead, guarded by the first division, and if its own 
wagons, well horsed as for the most part they were, got over 
the ground at a satisfactory pace, the requisitioned vehicles, 
most of them empty, delayed the troops and produced sad con- 
fusion among the hills of the defile of Stonne. After leaving 


THE DOWNFALL 


1 26 

the hamlet of la Berliere the road rises more sharply between 
wooded hills on either side. Finally, about eight o’clock, the 
two remaining divisions got under way, when Marshal Mac- 
Mahon came galloping up, vexed to find there those troops that 
he supposed had left la Besace that morning, with only a short 
march between them and Mouzon ; his comment to General 
Douay on the subject was expressed in warm language. It 
was determined that the first division and the train should be 
allowed to proceed on their way to Mouzon, but that the two 
other divisions, that they might not be further retarded by this 
cumbrous advance-guard, should move by the way of Rau- 
court and Autrecourt so as to pass the Meuse at Villers. 
The movement to the north was dictated by the marshal’s in- 
tense anxiety to place the river between his army and the 
enemy ; cost what it might, they must be on the right bank 
that night. The rear-guard had not yet left Osches when a 
Prussian battery, recommencing the performance of the previ- 
ous day, began to play on them from a distant eminence, over 
in the direction of Saint-Pierremont. They made the mistake 
of firing a few shots in reply ; then the last of the troops filed 
out of the town. 

Until nearly eleven o’clock the io6th slowly pursued its 
way along the road which zigzags through the pass of Stonne 
between high hills. On the left hand the precipitous summits 
rear their heads, devoid of vegetation, while to the right the 
gentler slopes are clad with woods down to the roadside. The 
sun had come out again, and the heat was intense down in the 
inclosed valley, where an oppressive solitude prevailed. After 
leaving la Berliere, which lies at the foot of a lofty and deso- 
late mountain surmounted by a Calvary, there is not a house 
to be seen, not a human being, not an animal grazing in the 
meadows. And the men, the day before so faint with hunger, 
so spent with fatigue, who since that time had had no food to 
restore, no slumber, to speak of, to refresh them, were now 
dragging themselves listlessly along, disheartened, filled with 
sullen anger. 

Soon after that, just as the men had been halted for a short 
rest along the roadside, the roar of artillery was heard away 
at their right ; judging from the distinctness of the detona- 
tions the firing could not be more than two leagues distant. 
Upon the troops, weary with waiting, tired of retreating, the 
effect was magical ; in the twinkling of an eye everyone was 
on his feet, eager, in a quiver of excitement, no longer mind- 


THE DOWN-FALL 


127 


ful of bis hunger and fatigue : why did they not advance ? 
They preferred to fight, to die, rather than keep on flying thus, 
no one knew why or whither. 

General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, accompanied by Colonel de 
Vineuil, had climbed a hill on the right to reconnoiter the 
country. They were visible up there in a little clearing be- 
tween two belts of wood, scanning the surrounding hills with 
their field-glasses, when all at once they dispatched an aide- 
de-camp to the column, with instructions to send up to them 
the francs-tireurs if they were still there. A few men, Jean 
and Maurice among them, accompanied the latter, in case there 
should be need of messengers. 

“ A beastly country this, with its everlasting hills and 
woods ! ” the general shouted, as soon as he caught sight of 
Sambuc. ‘‘You hear the music — where is it? where is the 
fighting going on ? ” 

Sambuc, with Ducat and Cabasse close at his heels, listened 
a moment before he answered, casting his eye over the wide 
horizon, and Maurice, standing beside him and gazing out 
over the panorama of valley and forest that lay beneath him, 
was struck with admiration. It was like a boundless sea, 
whose gigantic waves had been arrested by some mighty force. 
In the foreground the somber verdure of the woods made 
splashes of sober color on the yellow of the fields, while in the 
brilliant sunlight the distant hills were bathed in purplish 
vapors. And while nothing was to be seen, not even the 
tiniest smoke-wreath floating on the cloudless sky, the cannon 
were thundering away in the distance, like the muttering of a 
rising storm. 

“ Here is Sommanthe, to the right,” Sambuc said at last, 
pointing to a high hill crowned by a wood. “ Yoncq lies off 
yonder to the left. The fighting is at Beaumont, General.” 

“Either at Varniforet or Beaumont,” Ducat observed. 

The general muttered below his breath : “ Beaumont, 

Beaumont — a man can never tell where he is in this d — d 
country.” Then raising his voice: “And how far may this 
Beaumont be from here ? ” 

“ A little more than six miles, if you take the road from 
Chene to Stenay, which runs up the valley yonder.” 

There was no cessation of the firing, which seemed to be 
advancing from west to east with a continuous succession of 
reports like peals of thunder. Sambuc added : 

^^Bigre ! it’s getting warm. It is just what I expected ; you 


THE downfall 


know what I told you this morning, General ; it is certainly 
the batteries that we saw in the wood of Dieulet. By this 
time the whole army that came up through Buzancy and Beau- 
clair is at work mauling the 5th corps.” 

There was silence among them, while the battle raging in 
the distance growled more furiously than ever, and Maurice 
had to set tight his teeth to keep himself from speaking his 
mind aloud. Why did they not hasten whither the guns were 
calling them, without such waste of words ? He had never 
known what it was to be excited thus ; every discharge found 
an echo in his bosom and inspired him with a fierce longing to 
be present at the conflict, to put an end to it. Were they to 
pass by that battle, so near almost that they could stretch 
forth their arm and touch it with their hand, and never expend 
a cartridge ? It must be to decide a wager that some one had 
made, that since the beginning of the campaign they were 
dragged about the country thus, always flying before the 
enemy ! At Vouziers they had heard the musketry of the rear- 
guard, at Osches the German guns had played a moment on 
their retreating backs ; and now they were to run for it again, 
they were not to be allowed to advance at double-quick to 
the succor of comrades in distress ! Maurice looked at 
Jean, who was also very pale, his eyes shining with a bright, 
feverish light. Every heart leaped in every bosom at the loud 
summons of the artillery. 

While they were waiting a general, attended by his staff, 
was seen ascending the narrow path that wound up the hill. 
It was Douay, their corps-commander, who came hastening up, 
with anxiety depicted on his countenance, and when he had 
questioned the francs-tireurs he gave utterance to an exclama- 
tion of despair. But what could he have done, even had he 
learned their tidings that morning ? The marshal’s orders 
were explicit : they must be across the Meuse that night, cost 
what it might. And then again, how was he to collect his 
scattered troops, strung out along the road to Rauconrt, and 
direct then on Beaumont? Could they arrive in time to be of 
use ? The 5th corps must be in full retreat on Mouzon 
by that time, as was indicated by the sound of the firing, 
which was receding more and more to the eastward, as \ 
deadly hurricane moves off after having accomplished its dis- 
astrous work. With a fierce gesture, expressive of his sense 
of impotency. General Douay outstretched his arms toward 
the wide horizon of hill and dale, of woods and fields, and 


THE DOWNFALL 


129 


the order went forth to proceed with the march to Rau- 
court. 

Ah, what a march was that through that dismal pass of 
Stonne, with the lofty summits o’erhanging them on either 
side, while through the woods on their right came the inces- 
sant volleying of the artillery. Colonel de Vineuil rode at the 
head of his regiment, bracing himself firmly in his saddle, his 
face set and very pale, his eyes winking like those of one try- 
ing not to weep. Captain Beaudoin strode along in silence, 
gnawing his mustache, while Lieutenant Rochas let slip an 
occasional imprecation, invoking ruin and destruction on him- 
self and everyone besides. Even the most cowardly among 
the men, those who had the least stomach for fighting, were 
shamed and angered by their continuous retreat ; they felt the 
bitter humiliation of turning their backs while those beasts of 
Prussians were murdering their comrades over yonder. 

After emerging from the pass the road, from a tortuous path 
among the hills, increased in width and led through a broad 
stretch of level country, dotted here and there with small 
woods. The 106th was now a portion of the rear-guard, and 
at every moment since leaving Osches had been expecting to 
feel the enemy’s attack, for the Prussians were following the 
column step by step, never letting it escape their vigilant eyes, 
waiting, doubtless, for a favorable opportunity to fall on its 
rear. Their cavalry were on the alert to take advantage of 
any bit of ground that promised them an opportunity of get- 
ting in on our flank ; several squadrons of Prussian Guards 
were seen advancing from behind a wood, but they gave up 
their purpose upon a demonstration made by a regiment of 
our hussars, who came up at a gallop, sweeping the road. 
'Thanks to the breathing-spell afforded them by this circum- 
stance the retreat went on in sufficiently good order, and Rau- 
coLirtwas not far away, when a spectacle greeted their eyes 
that filled them with consternation and completely demoral- 
ized the troops. Upon coming to a cross-road they suddenly 
caught sight of a hurrying, straggling, flying throng, wounded 
officers, soldiers without arms and without organization, run- 
away teams from the train, all — men and animals — mingled in 
wildest confusion, wild with panic. It was the wreck of one 
of the brigades of the ist division, which had been sent that 
morning to escort the train to Mouzon ; there had been an 
unfortunate misconception of orders, and this brigade and a 
portion of the wagons had taken a wrong road and reached 


130 


THE DOWNEALL 


Varniforet, near Beaumont, at the very time when the 5 th 
corps was being driven back in disorder. Taken unawares, 
overborne by the flank attack of an enemy superior in num- 
bers, they had fled ; and bleeding, with haggard faces, crazed 
with fear, were now returning to spread consternation among 
their comrades ; it was as if they had been wafted thither on 
the breath of the battle that had been raging incessantly 
since noon. 

Alarm and anxiety possessed everyone, from highest to 
lowest, as the column poured through Raucourt in wild stam- 
pede. Should they turn to the left, toward Autrecourt, and 
attempt to pass the Meuse at Villers, as had been previously 
decided ? The general hesitated, fearing to encounter diffi- 
culties in crossing there, even if the bridge were not already 
in possession of the Prussians ; he finally deeided to keep 
straight on through the defile of Harancourt and thus reach 
Remilly before nightfall. First Mouzon, then Villers, and last 
Remilly ; they were still pressing on northward, with the tramp 
of the uhlans on the road behind them. There remained scant 
four miles for them to accomplish, but it was five o’clock, and 
the men were sinking with fatigue. They had been under 
arms since daybreak, twelve hours had been consumed in 
advancing three short leagues ; they were harassed and fa- 
tigued as much by their constant halts and the stress of their 
emotions as by the actual toil of the march. For the last two 
nights they had had scarce any sleep ; their hunger had been 
unappeased since they left Vouziers. In Raucourt the dis- 
tress was terrible ; men fell in the ranks from sheer inanition. 

The little town is rich, with its numerous factories, its hand- 
some thoroughfare lined with two rows of well-built houses, and* 
its pretty church and 7iiairie; but the night before Marshal 
MacMahon and the Emperor had passed that way with their 
respective staffs and all the imperial household, and during 
the whole of the present morning the entire ist corps had 
been streaming like a torrent through the main street. The 
resources of the place had not been adequate to meet the 
requirements of these hosts ; the shelves of the bakers and 
grocers were empty, and even the houses of the bourgeois had 
been swept clean of provisions ; there was no bread, no wine, 
no sugar, nothing capable of allaying hunger or thirst. Ladies 
had been seen to station themselves before their doors and 
deal out glasses of wine and cups of bouillon until cask and 
kettle alike were drained of their last drop. And so there was 


THE DOWNFALL 


131 

an end, and when, about three o’clock, the first regiments of 
the 7th corps began to appear the scene was a pitiful one ; the 
broad street was filled from curb to curb with weary, dust- 
stained men, dying with hunger, and there was not a mouth- 
ful of food to give them. Many of them stopped, knocking 
at doors and extending their hands beseechingly toward win- 
dows, begging for a morsel of bread, and women were seen to 
cry .and sob as they motioned that they could not help them, 
that they had nothing left. 

At the corner of the Rue Dix-Potiers Maurice had an attack 
of dizziness and reeled as if about to fall. To Jean, who came 
hastening up, he said : 

“ No, leave me ; it is all up with me. I may as well die 
here ! ” 

He had sunk down upon a door-step. The corporal spoke 
in a rough tone of displeasure assumed for the occasion : 

Nom de Dieu ! why don’t you try to behave like a soldier ! 
Do you want the Prussians to catch you ? Come, get up ! ” 

Then, as the young man, lividly pale, his eyes tight-closed, 
almost unconscious, made no reply, he let slip another oath, 
but in another key this time, in a tone of infinite gentleness 
and pity : 

'■'■Nom de Dieu ! nom de Dieu ! ” 

And running to a drinking-fountain near by, he filled his 
basin with water and hurried back to bathe his friend’s face. 
Then, without further attempt at concealment, he took fropi 
his sack the last remaining biscuit that he had guarded with 
such jealous caution, and commenced crumbling it into small 
bits that he introduced between the other’s teeth. The famish- 
ing man opened his eyes and ate greedily. 

“ But you,” he asked, suddenly recollecting himself, “ how 
comes it that you did not eat it ? ” 

“Oh, I!” said Jean. “I’m tough, I can wait. A good 
drink of Adam’s ale, and I shall be all right.” 

He went and filled his basin again at the fountain, emptied 
it at a single draught, and came back smacking his lips in 
token of satisfaction with his feast. He, too, was cadaverously 
pale, and so faint with hunger that his hands were trembling 
like a leaf. 

“ Come, get up, and let’s be going. We must be getting 
back to the comrades, little one.” 

Maurice leaned on his arm and suffered himself to be 
helped along as if he had been a child ; never had woman’s 


132 


THE DOWNFALL 


arm about him so warmed his heart. In that extremity of 
distress, with death staring him in the face, it afforded him a 
deliciously cheering sense of comfort to know that someone 
loved and cared for him, and the reflection that that heart, 
which was so entirely his, was the heart of a simple-minded 
peasant, whose aspirations scarcely rose above the satisfaction 
of his daily wants, for whom he had recently experienced a 
feeling of repugnance, served to add to his gratitude a sensa- 
tion of ineffable joy. Was it not the brotherhood that had 
prevailed in the world in its earlier days, the friendship that 
had existed before caste and culture were ; that friendship 
which unites two men and makes them one in their common 
need of assistance, in the presence of Nature, the common 
enemy ? He felt the tie of humanity uniting him and Jean, 
and was proud to know that the latter, his comforter and sa- 
vior, was stronger than he ; while to Jean, who did not ana- 
lyze his sensations, it afforded unalloyed pleasure to be the 
instrument of protecting, in his friend, that cultivation and in- 
telligence which, in himself, were only rudimentary. Since 
the death of his wife, who had been snatched away from him 
by a frightful catastrophe, he had believed that his heart was 
dead, he had sworn to have nothing more to do with those 
creatures, who, even when they are not wicked and depraved, are 
cause of so much suffering to man. And thus, to both of them 
their friendship was a comfort and relief. There was no need 
of any demonstrative display of affection ; they understood 
each other ; there was close community of sympathy between 
them, and, notwithstanding their apparent external dissimilar- 
ity, the bond of pity and common suffering made them as one 
during their terrible march that day to Remilly. 

As the French rear-guard left Raucourt by one end of the 
town the Germans came in at the other, and forthwith two of 
their batteries commenced firing from the position they had 
taken on the heights to the left ; the io6th, retreating along 
the road that follows the course of the Emmane, was directly 
in the line of fire. A shell cut down a poplar on the bank of 
the stream ; another came and buried itself in the soft ground 
close to Captain Beaudoin, but did not burst. From there on 
to Harancourt, however, the walls of the pass kept approach- 
ing nearer and nearer, and the troops were crowded together 
in a narrow gorge commanded on either side by hills cov- 
ered with trees. A handful of Prussians in ambush on those 
heights might have caused incalculable disaster. With the 


THE DOWNFALL 


133 


cannon thundering in their rear and the menace of a possible 
attack on either flank, the men’s uneasiness increased with 
every step they took, and they were in haste to get out of 
such a dangerous neighborhood ; hence they summoned up 
their reserved strength, and those soldiers who, but now in 
Raucourt, had scarce been able to drag themselves along, 
now, with the peril that lay behind them as an incentive, 
struck out at a good round pace. The very horses seemed 
to be conscious that the loss of a minute might cost them 
dear. And the impetus thus given continued ; all was going 
well, the head of the column must have reached Remilly, 
when, all at once, their progress was arrested. 

“ Heavens and earth ! ” said Chouteau, “ are they going to 
leave us here in the road ? ” 

The regiment had not yet reached Harancourt, and the 
shells were still tumbling about them^ ; while the men were 
marking time, awaiting the word to go ahead again, one burst 
on the right of the column, without injuring anyone, fortu- 
nately. Five minutes passed, that seemed to them long as an 
eternity, and still they did not move ; there was some obstacle 
on ahead that barred their way as effectually as if a strong 
wall had been built across the road. The colonel, standing 
up in his stirrups, peered nervously to the front, for he saw 
that it would require but little to create a panic among his 
men. 

“We are betrayed ; everybody can see it,” shouted Chou- 
teau. 

Murmurs of reproach arose on every side, the sullen mut- 
tering of their discontent exasperated by their fears. Yes, 
yes ! they had been brought there to be sold, to be delivered 
over to the Prussians. In the. baleful fatality that pursued 
them, and among all the blunders of their leaders, those dense 
intelligences were unable to account for such an uninter- 
rupted succession of disasters on any other ground than that 
of treachery. 

“ We are betrayed ! we are betrayed ! ” the men wildly re- 
peated. 

Then Loubet’s fertile intellect evolved an idea : “ It is 
like enough that that pig of an Emperor has sat himself down 
in the road, with his baggage, on purpose to keep us here.” 

The idle fancy was received as true, and immediately spread 
up and down the line ; everyone declared that the imperial 
household had blocked the road and was responsible for the 


134 


THE DOWNFALL 


stoppage. There was a universal chorus of execration, of 
opprobrious epithets, an unchaining of the hatred and hos- 
tility that were inspired by the insolence of the Emperor’s 
attendants, who took possession of the towns where they 
stopped at night as if they owned them, unpacking their 
luxuries, their costly wines and plate of gold and silver, before 
the eyes of the poor soldiers who were destitute of every- 
thing, filling the kitchens with the steam of savory viands 
while they, poor devils, had nothing for it but to tighten the 
belt of their trousers. Ah ! that wretched Emperor, that 
miserable man, deposed from his throne and stripped of his 
command, a stranger in his own empire ; whom they were 
conveying up and down the country along with the other 
baggage, like some piece of useless furniture, whose doom it 
was ever to drag behind him the irony of his imperial state : 
cent-gardes, horses, carriages, cooks, and vans, sweeping, as it 
were, the blood and mire from the roads of his defeat with 
the magnificence of his court mantle, embroidered with 
the heraldic bees ! 

In rapid succession, one after the other, two more shells fell ; 
Lieutenant Rochas had his kepi carried away by a fragment. 
The men huddled closer together and began to crowd forward, 
the movement gathering strength as it ran from rear to front. 
Inarticulate cries were heard, Lapoulle shouted furiously to go 
ahead. A minute longer and there would have been a horri- 
ble catastrophe, and many men must have been crushed to 
death in the mad struggle to escape from the funnel-like 
gorge. 

The colonel — he was very pale — turned and spoke to the 
soldiers : 

“ My children, my children,^ be a little patient. I have sent 
to see what is the matter — it will only be a moment ” 

But they did not advance, and the seconds seemed like 
centuries. Jean, quite cool and collected, resumed his hold of 
Maurice’s hand, and whispered to him that, in case their com- 
rades began to shove, they two could leave the road, climb the 
hill on the left, and make their way to the stream. He looked 
about to see where the francs-tireurs were, thinking he might 
gain some information from them regarding the roads, but 
was told they had vanished while the column was passing 
through Raucourt. Just then the march was resumed, and 
almost immediately abend in the road took them out of range 
of the German batteries. Later in the day it was ascertained 


The downfall 


i3S 

that it was four cuirassier regiments of Bonnemain’s division 
who, in thedisorder of that ill-starred retreat, had thus blocked 
the road of the 7th corps and delayed the march. 

It was nearly dark when the io6th passed through Ange- 
court. The wooded hills continued on the right, but to the 
left the country was more level, and a valley was visible in the 
distance, veiled in bluish mists. At last, just as the shades of 
night were descending, they stood on the heights of Remilly 
and beheld a ribbon of pale silver unrolling its length upon a 
broad expanse of verdant plain. It was the Meuse, that 
Meuse they had so longed to see, and where it seemed as 
if victory awaited them. 

Pointing to some lights in the distance that were beginning 
to twinkle cheerily among the trees, down in that fertile valley 
that lay there so peaceful in the mellow twilight, Maurice 
said to Jean, with the glad content of a man revisiting a coun- 
try that he knows and loves : 

“ Look ! over that way — that is Sedan ! ” 


VII. 

R emilly is built on a hill that rises from the left bank of 
the Meuse, presenting the appearance of an amphitheater ; 
the one village street that meanders circuitously down the 
sharp descent was thronged with men, horses, and vehicles in 
dire confusion. Half-way up the hill, in front of the church, 
some drivers had managed to interlock the wheels of their 
guns, and all the oaths and blows of the artillerymen were 
unavailing to get them forward. Further down, near the 
woolen mill, where the Emmane tumbles noisily over the 
dam, the road was choked with a long line of stranded bag- 
gage wagons, while close at hand, at the inn of the Maltese 
Cross, a constantly increasing crowd of angry soldiers pushed 
and struggled, and could not obtain so much as a glass of 
wine. 

All this mad hurly-burly was going on at the southern end of 
the village, which is here separated from the Meuse by a little 
grove of trees, and where the engineers had that morning- 
stretched a bridge of boats across the river. There was a 
ferry to the right; the ferryman’s house stood by itself, white 
and staring, amid a rank growth of weeds. Great fires had 
been built on either bank, which, being replenished from time 


136 


THE DOlVMEALL 


to time, glared ruddily in the darkness and made the stream 
and both its shores as light as day. They served to show the 
immense multitude of men massed there, awaiting a chance to 
cross, while the footway only permitted the passage of two men 
abreast, and over the bridge proper the cavalry and artillery 
were obliged to proceed at a walk, so that the crossing prom- 
ised to be a protracted operation. It was said that the troops 
still on the left bank comprised a brigade of the ist corps, an 
ammunition train, and the four regiments of cuirassiers belong- 
ing to Bonnemain’s division, while coming up in hot haste 
behind them was the 7th corps, over thirty thousand strong, 
possessed with the belief that the enemy was at their heels and 
pushing on with feverish eagerness to gain the security of the 
other shore. 

For a while despair reigned. What! they had been march- 
ing since morning with nothing to eat, they had summoned up 
all their energies to escape that deadly trap at Harancourt 
pass, only in the end to be landed in that slough of despond, 
with an insurmountable wall staring them in the face! It 
would be hours, perhaps, before it became the last comer’s 
turn to cross, and everyone knew that even if the Prussians 
should not be enterprising enough to continue their pursuit in 
the darkness they would be there with the first glimpse of day- 
light. Orders came for them to stack muskets, however, and 
they made their camp on the great range of bare hills which 
slope downward to the meadows of the Meuse, with the 
Mouzon road running at their base. To their rear and occu- 
pying the level plateau on top of the range the guns of the 
reserve artillery were arranged in battery, pointed so as to 
sweep the entrance of the pass should there be necessity for it. 
And thus commenced another period of agonized, grumbling 
suspense. 

When finally the preparations were all completed the io6th 
found themselves posted in a field of stubble above the road, 
in a position that commanded a view of the broad plain. The 
men had parted regretfully with their arms, casting timorous 
looks behind them that showed they were apprehensive of a 
night attack. Their faces were stern and set, and silence 
reigned, only broken from time to time by some sullen murmur 
of angry complaint. It was nearly nine o’clock, they had been 
there two hours, and yet many of them, notwithstanding their 
terrible fatigue, could not sleep; stretched on the bare ground, 
they would start and bend their ears to catch the faintest sound 


THE DOWNFALL 


137 


that rose in the distance. They had ceased to fight their tor- 
turing hunger; they would eat over yonder, on the other bank, 
when they had passed the river; they would eat grass if 
nothing else was to be found. The crowd at the bridge, how- 
ever, seemed to increase rather than diminish; the officers that 
General Douay had stationed there came back to him every 
few minutes, always bringing the same unwelcome report, that 
it would be hours and hours before any relief could be ex- 
pected. Finally the general determined to go down to the 
bridge in person, and the men saw him on the bank, bestirring 
himself and others and hurrying the passage of the troops. 

Maurice, seated with Jean against a wall, pointed to the 
north, as he had done befor-e. “There is Sedan in the dis- 
tance. And look ! Bazeilles is over yonder — and then comes 
Douzy, and then Carignan, more to the right. We shall con- 
centrate at .Carignan, I feel sure we shall. Ah! there is 
plenty of room, as you would see if it were daylight!” 

And his sweeping gesture embraced the entire valley that 
lay beneath them, enfolded in shadow. There was sufficient 
light remaining in the sky that they could distinguish the pale 
gleam of the river where it ran its course among the dusky 
meadows. The scattered trees made clumps of denser shade, 
especially a row of poplars to the left, whose tops were profiled 
on the horizon like the fantastic ornaments on some old castle 
gateway. And in the background, behind Sedan, dotted with 
countless little points of brilliant light, the shadows had mus- 
tered, denser and darker, as if all the forests of the Ardennes 
had collected the inky blackness of their secular oaks and cast 
it there. 

Jean’s gaze came back to the bridge of boats beneath them. 

“Look there! everything is against us. We shall never get 
across.” 

The fires upon both banks blazed up more brightly just then, 
and their light was so intense that the whole fearful scene was 
pictured on the darkness with vivid distinctness. The boats 
on which the longitudinal girders rested, owing to the weight 
of the cavalry and artillery that had been crossing uninter- 
ruptedly since morning, had settled to such an extent that the 
floor of the bridge was covered with water. The cuirassiers 
were passing at the time, two abreast, in a long unbroken file, 
emerging from the obscurity of the hither shore to be swal- 
lowed up in the shadows of the other, and nothing was to be 
seen of the bridge; they appeared to be marching on the 


THE DOWNFALL 


bosom of the ruddy stream, that flashed and danced in the 
flickering firelight. The horses snorted and hung back, mani- 
festing every indication of terror as they felt the unstable path- 
way yielding beneath their feet, and the cuirassiers, standing 
erect in their stirrups and clutching at the reins, poured onward 
in a steady, unceasing stream, wrapped in their great white 
mantles, their helmets flashing in the red light of the flames. 
One might have taken them for some spectral band of knights, 
with locks of fire, going forth to do battle with the powers of 
darkness. 

Jean’s suffering wrested from him a deep-toned exclama- 
tion: 

“Oh! I am hungry ! ’’ 

On every side, meantime, the men, notwithstanding the 
complainings of their empty stomachs, had thrown themselves 
down to sleep. Their fatigue was so great that it finally got 
the better of their fears and struck them down upon the bare 
earth, where they lay on their back, with open mouth and arms 
outstretched, like logs beneath the moonless sky. The bustle 
of the camp was stilled, and all along the naked range, from 
end to end, there reigned a silence as of death. 

“Oh! I am hungry; I am so hungry that I could eat 
dirt!” 

Jean, patient as he was aftd inured to hardship, could not 
restrain the cry; he had eaten nothing in thirty-six hours, and 
it was torn from him by sheer stress of physical suffering. 
Then Maurice, knowing that two or three hours at all events 
must elapse before their regiment could move to pass the 
stream, said: 

“See here, I have an uncle not far from here — you know, 
Uncle Fouchard, of whom you have heard me speak. His 
house is five or six hundred yards from here; I didn’t like the 

idea, but as you are so hungry The deuce ! the old man 

can’t refuse us bread!’’ 

His comrade made no objection and they went off together. 
Father Fouchard’s little farm was situated just at the mouth of 
Harancourt pass, near the plateau where the artillery was 
posted. The house was a low structure, surrounded by quite 
an imposing cluster of dependencies; a barn, a stable, and 
cow-sheds, while across the road was a disused carriage- house 
which the old peasant had converted into an abattoir, where he 
slaughtered with his own hands the cattle which he afterward 
carried about the country in his wagon to his customers. 


TH£: downfall 


139 


Maurice was surprised as he approached the house to see no 
light. 

“Ah, the old miser! he has locked and barred everything 
tight and fast. Like as not he won’t let us in.” 

But something that he saw brought him to a standstill. 
Before the house a dozen soldiers were moving to and fro, 
hungry plunderers, doubtless, on the prowl in quest of some- 
thing to eat. First they had called, then had knocked, and 
now, seeing that the place was dark and deserted, they were 
hammering at the door with the butts of their muskets in an 
attempt to force it open. A growling chorus of encourage- 
ment greeted them from the outsiders of the circle. 

Nom de Dieu I go ahead! smash it in, since there is no 
one at home ! ’’ 

All at once the shutter of a window in the garret was thrown 
back and a tall old man presented himself, bare-headed, wear- 
ing the peasant’s blouse, with a candle in one hand and a gun 
in the other. Beneath the thick shock of bristling white hair 
was a square face, deeply seamed and wrinkled, with a strong 
nose, large, pale eyes, and stubborn chin. 

“You must be robbers, to smash things as you are doing!” 
he shouted in an angry tone. “What do you want?” 

The soldiers, taken by surprise, drew back a little way. 

“We are perishing with hunger; we want something to eat.” 

“I have nothing, not a crust. Do you suppose that I keep 
victuals in my house to fill a hundred thousand mouths? 
Others were here before you ; yes. General Ducrot’s men were 
here this morning, I tell you, and they cleaned me out of 
everything.” 

The soldiers came forward again, one by one. 

“Let us in, all the same; we can rest ourselves, and you 
can hunt up something ” 

And they were commencing to hammer at the door again, 
when the old fellow, placing his candle on the window-sill, 
raised his gun to his shoulder. 

“As true as that candle stands there. I’ll put a hole in the 
first man that touches that door!” 

The prospect looked favorable for a row. Oaths and 
imprecations resounded, and one of the men was heard to 
shout that they would settle matters with the pig of a peasant, 
who was like all the rest of them and would throw his bread in 
the river rather than give a mouthful to a starving soldier. 
The light of the candle glinted on the barrels of the chassepots 


140 


THE DOWNFALL 


as they were brought to an aim ; the angry men were about to 
shoot him where he stood, while he, headstrong and violent, 
would not yield an inch. 

“Nothing, nothing! Not a crust! I tell you they cleaned 
me out! “ 

Maurice rushed in in affright, followed by Jean. 

“Comrades, comrades “ 

He knocked up the soldiers’ guns, and raising his eyes, said 
entreatingly : 

“Come, be reasonable. Don’t you know me? It is I.’’ 

“Who, I?’’ 

“Maurice Levasseur, your nephew.’’ 

Father Fouchard took up his candle. He recognized his 
nephew, beyond a doubt, but was firm in his resolve not to 
give so much as a glass of water. 

“How can I tell whether you are my nephew or not in this 
infernal darkness? Clear out, everyone of you, or I will fire ! ’ ’ 

And amid an uproar of execration, and threats to bring him 
down and burn the shanty, he still had nothing to say but: 
“Clear out, or I’ll fire!’’ which he repeated more than twenty 
times. 

Suddenly a loud clear voice was heard rising above the din : 

“But not on me, father?’’ 

The others stood aside, and in the flickering light of the 
candle a man appeared, wearing the chevrons of a quarter- 
master-sergeant. It was Honore, whose battery was a short 
two hundred yards from there and who had been struggling for 
the last two hours against an irresistible longing to come and 
knock at that door. He had sworn never to set foot in that 
house again, and in all his four years of army life had not 
exchanged a single letter with that father whom he now ad- 
dressed so curtly. The marauders had drawn apart and were 
conversing excitedly among themselves; what, the old man’s 
son, and a “non-com.” ! it wouldn’t answer; better go and 
try their luck elsewhere ! So they slunk away and vanished in 
the darkness. 

When Fouchard saw that he had nothing more to fear he 
said in a matter-of-course way, as if he had seen his son only 
the day before: 

“It’s you All right. I’ll come down.” 

His descent was a matter of time. He could be heard 
inside the house opening locked doors and carefully fastening 
them again, the maneuvers of a man determined to leave 


THE downfall 


141 


nothing at loOSe ends. At last the door was opened, but only 
for a few inches, and the strong grasp that held it would let it 
go no further. 

“Come in, thou! and no one besides!” 

He could not turn away his nephew, however, notwithstand- 
ing his manifest repugnance. 

‘ ‘Well, thou too ! ” • 

He shut the door flat in Jean’s face, in spite of Maurice^s 
entreaties. But he was obdurate. No, no! he wouldn’t have 
it; he had no use for strangers and robbers in his house, to 
smash and destroy his furniture! Finally Honore shoved 
their comrade inside the door by main strength and the old 
man had to make the best of it, grumbling and growling vin- 
■dictively. He had carried his gun with him all this time. 
When at last he had ushered the three men into the common 
sitting-room and had stood his gun in a corner and placed the 
candle on the table, he sank into a mulish silence. 

“Say, father, we are perishing with hunger. You will let us 
have a little bread and cheese, won’t you?” 

He made a pretense of not hearing and did not answer, 
turning his head at every instant toward the window as if 
listening for some other band thatmiight be coming to lay 
siege to his house. 

“Uncle, Jean has been a brother to me; he deprived him- 
self of food to give it to me. And we have seen such suffer- 
ing together!” 

He turned and looked about the room to assure himself that 
nothing was missing, not giving the three soldiers so much as 
a glance, and at last, still without a word spoken, appeared to 
come to a decision. He suddenly arose, took the candle and 
went out, leaving them in darkness and carefully closing and 
locking the door behind him in order that no one might follow 
him. They could hear his footsteps on the stairs that led to 
the cellar. There was another long period of waiting, and 
when he returned, again locking and bolting everything after 
him, he placed upon the table a big loaf of bread and a cheese, 
amid a silence which, once his anger had blown over, was 
merely the result of cautious cunning, for no one can ever tell 
what may come of too much talking. The three men threw 
themselves ravenously upon the food, and the only sound 
to be heard in the room was the fierce grinding of their jaws. 

Honors rose, and going to the sideboard brought back a 
pitcher of water. 


THE DOWNFALL 




“I think you might have given us some wine, father.'^ 

Whereupon Fouchard, now master of himself and no longer 
fearing that his anger might lead him into unguarded speech, 
once more found his tongue. 

“Wine! I haven’t any, not a drop! The others, those 
fellows of Ducrot's, ate and drank all I had, robbed me of 
everything!” * 

He was lying, and try to conceal it as he might the shifty 
expression in his great light eyes showed it. For the past two 
days he had been driving away his cattle, as well those reserved 
for work on the farm as those he had purchased to slaughter, 
and hiding them, no one knew where, in the depths of some 
wood or in some abandoned quarry, and he had devoted hours 
to burying all his household stores, wine, bread, and things of 
the least value, even to the flour and salt, so that anyone might 
have ransacked his cupboards and been none the richer for it. 
He had refused to sell anything to the first soldiers who came 
along; no one knew, he might be able to do better later on; 
and the patient, sly old curmudgeon indulged himself with 
vague dreams of wealth. 

Maurice, who was first to satisfy his appetite, commenced to 
talk. 

“Have you seen my sister Henriette lately?” 

The old man was pacing up and down the room, casting an 
occasional glance at Jean, who was bolting huge mouthfuls of 
bread ; after apparently giving the subject long consideration 
he deliberately answered: 

“Henriette, yes, I saw her last month when I was in Sedan. 
But I saw Weiss, her husband, this morning. He was with 
Monsieur Delaherche, his boss, who had come over in his car- 
riage to see the soldiers at Mouzon — which is the same as say- 
ing that they were out for a good time.” 

An expression of intense scorn flitted over the old peasant’s 
impenetrable face. 

“Perhaps they saw more of the army than they wanted to, 
and didn’t have such a very good time after all, for ever since 
three o’clock the roads have been impassable on account of 
the crowds of flying soldiers.” 

In the same unmoved voice, as if the matter were one of 
perfect indifference to him, he gave them some tidings of the 
defeat of the 5th corps, that had been surprised at Beaumont 
while the men were making their soup and chased by the 
Bavarians all the way to Mouzon. Some fugitives who had 


THE DOWNFALL 


143 


passed through Remilly, mad with terror, had told him that 
they had been betrayed once more and that de Failly had sold 
them to Bismarck. Maurice’s thoughts reverted to the aim- 
less, blundering movements of the last two days, to Marshal 
MacMahon hurrying on their retreat and insisting on getting 
them across the Meuse at every cost, after wasting so many 
precious hours in incomprehensible delays. It was too late. 
Doubtless the marshal, who had stormed so on finding the 7th 
corps still at Osches when he supposed it to be at la Besace, 
had felt assured that the 5th corps was safe in camp at Mouzon 
when, lingering in Beaumont, it had come to grief there. But 
what could they expect from troops so poorly officered, demor- 
alized by suspense and incessant retreat, dying with hunger 
and fatigue? 

Fouchard - had finally come and planted himself behind 
Jean’s chair, watching with astonishment the inroads he was 
making on the bread and cheese. In a coldly sarcastic tone he 
asked : 

“Are you beginning to feel better, hdn'i ’’ 

The corporal raised his head and replied with the same 
peasant-like directness: 

“Just beginning, thank you!’’ 

Honore, notwithstanding his hunger, had ceased from eating 
whenever it seemed to him that he heard a noise about the 
house. If he had struggled long, and finally been false to his 
oath never to set foot in that house again, the reason was that 
he could no longer withstand his craving desire to see Silvine. 
The letter that he had received from her at Rheims lay on his 
bosom, next his skin, that letter, so tenderly passionate, in 
which she told him that she loved him still, that she should 
never love anyone save him, despite the cruel past, despite 
Goliah and little Chariot, that man’s child. He was thinking of 
naught save her, was wondering why he had not seen ^er yet, 
all the time watching himself that he might not let his father 
see his anxiety. At last his passion became too strong for 
him, however, and he asked in a tone as natural as he could 
command : 

“Is not Silvine with you any longer?’’ 

Fouchard gave his son a glance out of the corner of his eye, 
chuckling internally. 

“Yes, yes.’’ 

Then he expectorated and was silent, so that the artillery- 
man had presently to broach the subject again, 


144 


THE DOWNFALL 


“She has gone to bed, then?'’ 

“No, no.’’ 

Finally the old fellow condescended to explain that he, too, 
had been taking an outing that morning, had driven over to 
Raucourt market in his wagon and taken his little servant with 
him. He saw no reason, because a lot of soldiers happened 
to pass that way, why folks should cease to eat meat or why a 
man should not attend to his business, so he had taken a sheep 
and a quarter of beef over there, as it was his custom to do 
every Tuesday, and had just disposed of the last of his stock- 
in-trade when up came the 7th corps and he found himself in 
the middle of a terrible hubbub. Everyone was running, 
pushing, and crowding. Then he became alarmed lest they 
should take his horse and wagon from him, and drove off, 
leaving his servant, who was just then making some purchases 
in the tOAvn. 

“Oh, Silvine will come back all right,” he concluded in his 
tranquil voice. ‘‘She must have taken shelter with Doctor 
Dalichamp, her godfather. You would think to look at her 
that she wouldn’t dare to say boo to a goose, but she is a girl 
of courage, all the same. Yes, yes; she has lots of good 
qualities, Silvine has.” 

Was it an attempt on his part to be jocose? or did he wish to 
explain why it was he kept her in his service, that girl who 
had caused dissension between father and son, whose child by 
the Prussian was in the house? He again gave his boy that 
sidelong look and laughed his voiceless laugh. 

“Little Chariot is asleep there in his room; she surely won’t 
be long away, now.” 

Honore, with quivering lips, looked so intently at his father 
that the old man began to pace the floor again. Moft Dieu! 
yes, the* child was there; doubtless he would have to look on 
him. A painful silence filled the room, while he mechanically 
cut himself more bread and began to eat again. Jean also 
continued his operations in that line, without finding it neces- 
sary to say a word. Maurice contemplated the furniture, the 
old sideboard, the antique clock, and reflected on the long 
summer days that he had spent at Remilly in bygone times 
with his sister Henriette. The minutes slipped away, the clock 
struck eleven. 

“The devil!” he murmured, “it will never do to let the 
iregiment go off Avithout us!” 

He stepped to the AvindoAy and opened it^ Foiichard making 


THE DOWNFALL 


145 


no objection. Beneath lay the valley, a great bowl filled to 
the brim with blackness; presently, however, when his eyes 
became more accustomed to the obscurity, he had no difficulty 
in distinguishing the bridge, illuminated by the fires on the 
two banks. The cuirassiers were passing still, like phantoms 
in their long white cloaks, while their steeds trod upon the 
bosom of the stream and a chill wind of terror breathed on 
them from behind ; and so the spectral train moved on, appar- 
ently interminable, in an endless, slow-moving vision of 
unsubstantial forms. Toward the right, over the bare hills 
where the slumbering army lay, there brooded a stillness and 
repose like death. 

“Ah well!” said Maurice with a gesture of disappointment, 
“ 'twill be to-morrow morning.” 

He had left the window open, and Father Fouchard, seizing 
his gun, straddled the sill and stepped outside, as lightly as a 
young man. For a time they could hear his tramp upon the 
road, as regular as that of a sentry pacing his beat, but pres- 
ently it ceased and the only sound that reached their ears was 
the distant clamor on the crowded bridge; it must be that he 
had seated himself by the wayside, where he could watch for 
approaching danger and at slightest sign leap to defend his 
property. 

Honore’s anxiety meantime was momently increasing; his 
eyes were fixed constantly on the clock. It was less than four 
miles from Raucourt to Remilly, an easy hour’s walk for a 
woman as young and strong as Silvine. Why had she not 
returned in all that time since the old man lost sight of her in 
the confusion? He thought of the disorder of a retreating, 
army corps, spreading over the country and blocking the 
roads; some accident must certainly have happened, and he 
pictured her in distress, wandering among the lonely fields, 
trampled under foot by the horsemen. 

But suddenly the three men rose to their feet, moved by a 
common impulse. There was a sound of rapid steps coming 
up the road and the old man was heard to cock his weapon, 

“Who goes there?” he shouted. “Is it you, Silvine?” 

There was no reply. He repeated his question, threatening 
to fire. Then a laboring, breathless voice managed to articu- 
late: 

“Yes, yes. Father Fouchard; it is I,” And she quickly 
asked : ‘ ‘And Chariot ? ’ ’ 

“He is abed and asleep,” 


146 


THE DOWNFALL 


“That is well! Thanks.” 

There was no longer cause for her to hasten ; she gave 
utterance to a deep-drawn sigh, as if to rid herself of her 
burden of fatigue and distress. 

“Go in by the window,” said Fouchard. “There is com- 
pany in there.” 

She was greatly agitated when, leaping lightly into the room, 
she beheld the three men. In the uncertain candle-light she 
gave the impression of being very dark, with thick black hair 
and a pair of large, fine, lustrous eyes, the chief adornment of 
a small oval face, strong by reason of its tranquil resignation. 
The sudden meeting with Honore had sent all the blood rush- 
ing from her heart to her cheeks; and yet she was hardly sur- 
prised to find him there; he had been in her thoughts all the 
way home from Raucourt. 

He, trembling with agitation, his heart in his throat, spoke 
with affected calmness: 

“Good-evening, Silvine. ” 

“Good-evening, Honore.” 

Then, to keep from breaking down and bursting into tears, 
she turned away, and recognizing Maurice, gave him a smile. 
Jean’s presence was embarrassing to her. She felt as if she 
were choking somehow, and removed the foulard that she wore 
about her neck. 

Honore continued, dropping the friendly thou of other days: 

“We were anxious about you, Silvine, on account of the 
Prussians being so near at hand.” 

All at once her face became very pale and showed great dis- 
tress; raising her hand to her eyes as if to shut out some 
'atrocious vision, and directing an involuntary glance toward 
the room where Chariot was slumbering, she murmured: 

“The Prussians Oh! yes, yes, I saw them.” 

Sinking wearily upon a chair she told how, when the 7th 
corps came into Raucourt, she had fled for shelter to the house 
of her godfather, Doctor Dalichamp, hoping that Father 
Fouchard would think to come and take her up before he left 
the town. The main street was filled with a surging throng, so 
dense that not even a dog could have squeezed his way through 
it, and up to four o’clock she had felt no particular alarm, 
tranquilly employed in scraping lint in company with some of 
the ladies of the place; for the doctor, with the thought that 
they might be called on to care for some of the wounded, should 
there be a battle over in the direction of Metz and Verdun, had 


THE DOWNFALL 


HI 


been busying himself for the last two weeks with improvising 
a hospital in the great hall of the mairie. Some people who 
dropped in remarked that they might find use for their hospital 
sooner than they expected, and sure enough, a little after mid- 
day, the roar of artillery had reached their ears from over Beau- 
mont way. But that was not near enough to cause anxiety and 
no one was alarmed, when, all at once, just as the last of the 
French troops were filing out of Raucourt, a shell, with a 
frightful crash, came tearing through the roof of a neighboring 
house. Two others followed in quick succession; it was a 
German battery shelling the rear-guard of the 7th corps. 
Some of the wounded from Beaumont had already been 
brought in to the f?iairie^ where it was feared that the enemy’s 
projectiles would finish them as they lay on their mattresses 
waiting for the doctor to come and operate on them. The 
men were crazed with fear, and would have risen and gone 
down into the cellars, notwithstanding their mangled limbs, 
which extorted from them shrieks of agony. 

“And then,’’ continued Silvine, “I don’t know how it hap- 
pened, but all at once the uproar was succeeded by a deathlike 
stillness. 1 had gone upstairs and was looking from a window 
that commanded a view of the street and fields. There was 
not a soul in sight, not a ‘red-leg’ to be seen anywhere, when 
I heard the tramp, tramp of heavy footsteps, and then a voice 
shouted something that I could not understand and all the 
muskets came to the ground together with a great crash. And 
I looked down into the street below, and there was a crowd of 
small, dirty-looking men in black, with ugly, big faces and 
wearing helmets like those our firemen wear. Someone told 
me they were Bavarians. Then I raised my eyes again and 
saw, oh! thousands and thousands of them, streaming in by 
'the roads, across the fields, through the woods, in serried, 
never-ending columns. In the twinkling of an eye the ground 
was black with them, a black swarm, a swarm of black locusts, 
coming thicker and thicker, so that, in no time at all, the earth 
was hid from sight.’’ 

She shivered and repeated her former gesture, veiling her 
vision from some atrocious spectacle. 

“And the things that occurred afterward would exceed 
belief. It seems those men had been marching three days, 
and on top of that had fought at Beaumont like tigers ; hence 
they were perishing with hunger, their eyes were starting from 
their sockets, they were beside themselves. The officers made 


148 


THE DOWNFALL 


no effort to restrain them ; they broke into shops and private 
houses, smashing doors and windows, demolishing furniture, 
searching for something to eat and drink, no matter what, bolt- 
ing whatever they could lay their hands on. I saw one in the 
shop of Monsieur Simonin, the grocer, ladling molasses from 
a cask with his helmet. Others were chewing strips of raw 
bacon, others again had filled their mouths with flour. They 
were told that our troops had been passing through the town 
for the last two days and there was nothing left, but here and 
there they found some trifling store that had been hid away, 
not sufficient to feed so many hungry mouths, and that made 
them think the folks were lying to them, and they went on to 
smash things more furiously than ever. In less than an hour 
there was not a butcher’s, grocer’s, or baker’s shop in the city 
left ungutted; even the private houses were entered, their 
cellars emptied, and their closets pillaged. At the doctor’s — 
did you ever hear of such a thing? I caught one big fellow 
devouring the soap. But the cellar was the place where they 
did most mischief ; we could hear them from upstairs smash- 
ing the bottles and yelling like demons, and they drew the 
spigots of the casks, so that the place was flooded with wine; 
when they came out their hands were red with the good wine 
they had spilled. And to show what happens men when they 
make such brutes of themselves: a soldier found a large bottle 
of laudanum and drank it all down, in spite of Monsieur 
Dalichamp’s efforts to prevent him. The poor wretch was in 
horrible agony when I came away; he must be dead by this 
time.” 

A great shudder ran through her, and she put her hand to 
her eyes to shut out the horrid sight. 

“No, no! I cannot bear it; I saw too much!” 

Father Fouchard had crossed the road and stationed him- 
self at the open window where he could hear, and the tale of 
pillage made him uneasy; he had been told that the Prussians 
paid for all they took; were they going to start out as robbers 
at that late day? Maurice and Jean, too, were deeply inter- 
ested in those details about an enemy whom the girl had seen, 
and whom they had not succeeded in setting eyes on in their 
whole month’s campaigning, while Honor^, pensive and with 
dry, parched lips, was conscious only of the sound of her 
voice; he could think of nothing save her and the misfortune 
that had parted them. 

Just then the door of the adjoining room was opened, and 


THE DOWNFALL 


t49 

Httle- Chariot appeared. He had heard his mother’s voice, 
and came trotting into the apartment in his nightgown to give 
her a kiss. He was a chubby, pink little urchin, large and 
strong for his age, with a thatch of curling, straw-colored hair 
and big blue eyes. Silvine shivered at his sudden appearance, 
as if the sight of him had recalled to her mind the image of 
someone else that affected her disagreeably. Did she no 
longer recognize him, then, her darling child, that she looked 
at him thus, as if he were some evocation of that horrid night- 
mare ! She burst into tears. 

“My poor, poor child!’’ she exclaimed, and clasped him 
wildly to her breast, while Honore, ghastly pale, noted how 
strikingly like the little one was to Goliah ; the same broad, 
pink face, the true Teutonic type, in all the health and 
strength of rosy, smiling childhood. The son of the Prussian, 
the Prussian^ as the pothouse wits of Remilly had styled him! 
And the French mother, who sat there, pressing him to her 
bosom, her heart still bleeding with the recollection of the 
cruel sights she had witnessed that day! 

“My poor child, be good; come with me back to bed. Say 
good-night, my poor child.’’ 

She vanished, bearing him away. When she returned from 
the adjoining room she was no longer weeping; her face wore 
its customary expression of calm and courageous resignation. 

It was Honore who, with a trembling voice, started the 
conversation again. 

“And what did the Prussians do then?’’ 

“Ah, yes; the Prussians. Well, they plundered right and 
left, destroying everything, eating and drinking all they could 
lay hands on. They stole linen as well, napkins and sheets, 
and even curtains, tearing them in strips to make bandages for 
their feet. I saw some whose feet were one raw lump of flesh, 
so long and hard had been their march. One little group 1 
saw, seated at the edge of the gutter before the doctor’s house, 
who had taken off their shoes and were bandaging themselves 
with handsome chemises, trimmed with lace, stolen, doubtless, 
from pretty Madame Lefevre, the manufacturer’s wife. The 
pillage went on until night. The houses had no doors or win- 
dows left, and one passing in the street could look within and 
see the wrecked furniture, a scene of destruction that would 
have aroused the anger of a saint. For my part, I was almost 
wild, and could remain there no longer. They tried in vain to 
keep me, telling me that the roads were blocked, that I would 


THE DOWNFALL 


certainly be killed; I started, and as soon as I was Out of 
Raucourt, struck off to the right and took to the fields. Carts, 
loaded with wounded French and Prussians, were coming in 
from Beaumont. Two passed quite close to me in the dark- 
ness; I could hear the shrieks and groans, and I ran, oh! how 
I ran, across fields, through woods, I could not begin to tell 
you where, except that I made a wide circuit over toward 
Villers. 

“Twice I thought I heard soldiers coming and hid, but the 
only person I met was another woman, a fugitive like myself. 
She was from Beaumont, she said, and she told me things too 
horrible to repeat. After that we ran harder than ever. And 
at last I am here, so wretched, oh I so wretched with what I 
have seen ! ’ ’ 

Her tears flowed again in such abundance as to choke her 
utterance. The horrors of the day kept rising to her memory 
and would not down; she related the story that the woman of 
Beaumont had told her. That person lived in the main street 
of the village, where she had witnessed the passage of all the 
German artillery after nightfall. The column was accompa- 
nied on either side of the road by a file of soldiers bearing 
torches of pitch-pine, which illuminated the scene with the red 
glare of a great conflagration, and between the flaring, smok- 
ing lights the impetuous torrent of horses, guns, and men tore 
onward at a mad gallop. Their feet were winged with the tire- 
less speed of victory as they rushed on in devilish pursuit of 
the French, to overtake them in some last ditch and crush 
them, annihilate them there. They stopped for nothing; on, 
on they went, heedless of what lay in their way. Horses fell; 
their traces were immediately cut, and they were left to be 
ground and torn by the pitiless wheels until they were a shape- 
less, bleeding mass. Human beings, prisoners and wounded 
men, who attempted to cross the road, were ruthlessly borne 
down and shared their fate. Although the men were dying 
with hunger the fierce hurricane poured on unchecked; was a 
loaf thrown to the drivers, they caught it flying; the torch- 
bearers passed slices of meat to them on the end of their bayo- 
nets, and then, with the same steel that had served that purpose, 
goaded their maddened horses on to further effort. And the 
night grew old, and still the artillery was passing, with the 
mad roar of a tempest let loose upon the land, amid the fran- 
tic cheering of the men. 

Maurice’s fatigue was too much for him, and notwithstand- 


THE DOWNFALL 


151 

ing the interest with which he listened to Silvine’s narrative, 
after the substantial meal he had eaten he let his head decline 
upon the table on his crossed arms. Jean’s resistance lasted a 
little longer, but presently he too was overcome and fell dead 
asleep at the other end of the table. Father Fouchard had 
gone and taken his position' in the road again ; Honore was 
alone with Silvine, who was seated, motionless, before the 
still open window. 

The artilleryman rose, and drawing his chair to the win- 
dow, stationed himself there beside her. The deep peaceful- 
ness of the night was instinct with the breathing of the multi- 
tude that lay lost in slumber there, but on it now rose other 
and louder sounds ; the straining and creaking of the bridge, 
the hollow rumble of wheels; the artillery was crossing on the 
half-submerged structure. Horses reared and plunged in ter- 
ror at sight of the swift-running stream, the wheel of a caisson 
ran over the guard-rail ; immediately a hundred strong arms 
seized the encumbrance and hurled the heavy vehicle to the 
bottom of the river that it might not obstruct the passage. 
And as the young man watched the slow, toilsome retreat 
along the opposite bank, a movement that had commenced the 
day before and certainly would not be ended by the coming 
dawn, he could not help thinking of that other artillery that 
had gone storming through Beaumont, bearing down all before 
it, crushing men and horses in its path that it might not be 
delayed the fraction of a second. 

Honore drew his chair nearer to Silvine, and in the shud- 
dering darkness, alive with all those sounds of menace, gently 
whispered : 

“You are unhappy?” 

“Oh! yes; so unhappy!” 

She was conscious of the subject on w’hich he was about to 
speak, and her head sank sorrowfully on her bosom. 

“Tell me, how did it happen? I wish to know.” 

But she could not find words to answer him. 

“Did he take advantage of you, or was it with your con- 
sent?” 

Then she stammered, in a voice that was barely audible: 

'"Moil Dieu ! I do not know; I swear to you, I do not 
know, more than a babe unborn. I will not lie to you — I 
cannot! No, I have no excuse to offer; I cannot say he beat 
me. You had left me, I was beside myself, and it happened, 
how, I cannot, no, I cannot tell!” 


152 


THE DOWNFALL 


Sobs choked her utterance, and he, ashy pale and with a 
great lump rising in his throat, waited silently for a moment. 
The thought that she was unwilling to tell him a lie, however, 
was an assuagement to his rage and grief; he went on to ques- 
tion her further, anxious to know, the many things that as yet 
he had been unable to understand. 

“My father has kept you here, it seems?” 

She replied with her resigned, courageous air, without rais- 
ing her eyes : 

“I work hard for him, it does not cost much to keep me, 
and as there is now another mouth to feed he has taken advan- 
tage of it to reduce my wages. He knows well enough that 
now, when he orders, there is nothing left for me but to 
obey.” 

“But why do you stay with him?” 

The question surprised her so that she looked him in the 
face. 

“Where would you have me go? Here my little one and I 
have at least a home and enough to keep us from starving.” 

They were silent again, both intently reading in the other’s 
eyes, while up the shadowy valley the sounds of the sleeping 
camp came faintly to their ears, and the dull rumble of wheels 
upon the bridge of boats went on unceasingly. There was a 
shriek, the loud, despairing cry of man or beast in mortal 
peril, that passed, unspeakably mournful, through the dark 
night. 

“Listen, Silvine,” Honore slowly and feelingly went on; 
“you sent me a letter that afforded me great pleasure. I 
should have never come back here, but that letter — I have 
been reading it again this evening — speaks of things that could 
not have been expressed more delicately ” 

She had turned pale when first she heard the subject men- 
tioned. Perhaps he was angry that she had dared to write to 
him, like one devoid of shame; then, as his meaning became 
more clear, her face reddened with delight. 

“I know you to be truthful, and knowing it, I believe what 
you wrote in that letter — yes, I believe it now implicitly. 
You were right in supposing that, if I were to die in battle 
without seeing you again, it would be a great sorrow to me to 
leave this world with the thought that you no longer loved me. 
And therefore, since you love me still, since I am your first 

and only love ” His tongue became thick, his emotion 

was so deep that expression failed him. “Listen, Silvine; if 


THE DOWNFALL 


153 


those beasts of Prussians let me live, you shall yet be mine; 
yes, as soon as I have served my time out we will be married.” 

She rose and stood erect upon her feet, gave a cry of joy, 
and threw herself upon the young man’s bosom. She could 
not'speak a word ; every drop of blood in her veins was in her 
cheeks. He seated himself upon the chair and drew her down 
upon his lap. 

“I have thought the matter over carefully; it was to say 
what I have said that I came here this evening. Should my 
father refuse us his consent, the earth is large; we will go 
away. And your little one, no one shall harm him, mon Dieu J 
More will come along, and among them all I shall not know 
him from the others.” 

She was forgiven, fully and entirely. Such happiness 
seemed too great to be true; she resisted, murmuring: 

“No, it cannot be; it is too much; perhaps you might 
repent your generosity some day. But how good it is of you, 
Honore, and how I love you!” 

He silenced her with a kiss upon the lips, and strength was 
wanting her longer to put aside the great, the unhoped-for 
good fortune that had come to her; a life of happiness where 
she had looked forward to one of loneliness and sorrow! With 
an involuntary, irresistible impulse slie threw her arms about 
him, kissing him again and again, straining him to her bosom 
with all her woman’s strength, as a treasure that was lost and 
found again, that was hers, hers alone, that thenceforth no 
one was ever to take from her. He was hers once more, he 
whom she had lost, and she would die rather than let anyone 
deprive her of him. 

At that moment confused sounds reached their ears; the 
sleeping camp was awaking amid a tumult that rose and filled 
the dark vault of heaven. Hoarse voices were shouting orders, 
bugles were sounding, drums beating, and from the naked 
fields shadowy forms were seen emerging in indistinguishable 
masses, a surging, billowing sea whose waves were already 
streaming downward to the road beneath. The fires on the 
banks of the stream were dying down ; all that could be seen 
there was masses of men moving confusedly to and fro; it was 
not even possible to tell if the movement across the river was 
still in progress. Never had the shades of night veiled such 
depths of distress, such abject misery of terror. 

Father Fouchard came to the window and shouted that the 
troops were moving. Jean and Maurice awoke, stiff and shiv- 


154 


THE DOWNFALL 


ering, and got on their feet. Honore took Silvine’s hands in 
his and gave them a swift parting clasp. 

“It is a promise. Wait for me.” 

She could find no word to say in answer, but all her soul 
went out to him in one long, last loo^, as he leaped from the 
window and hurried away to find his battery. 

“Good-by, father!” 

“Good-by, my boy!” 

And that was all ; peasant and soldier parted as they had 
met, without embracing, like a father and son whose existence 
was of little import to each other. 

Maurice and Jean also left the farmhouse, and descended 
the steep hill on a run. When they reached the bottom the 
io6th was nowhere to be found ; the regiments had all moved 
off. They made inquiries, running this way and that, and 
were directed first one way and then another. At last, when 
they had near lost their wits in the fearful confusion, they 
stumbled on their company, under the command of Lieutenant 
Rochas; as for the regiment and Captain Beaudoin, no one 
could say where they were. And Maurice was astounded 
when he noticed for the first time that that mob of men, guns, 
and horses was leaving Remilly and taking the Sedan road 
that lay on the left bank. Something was wrong again; the 
passage of the Meuse was abandoned, they were in full retreat 
to the north ! 

An officer of chasseurs, who was standing near, spoke up in 
a loud voice: 

” No 7 n de Dieu ! the time for us to make the movement was 
the 28th, when we were at Chene!” 

Others were more explicit in their information ; fresh news 
had been received. About two o’clock in the morning one of 
Marshal MacMahon’s aides had come riding up to say to Gen- 
eral Douay that the whole army was ordered to retreat imme- 
diately on Sedan, without loss of a minute’s time. The dis- 
aster of the 5th corps at Beaumont had involved the three 
other corps. The general, who was at that time down at the 
bridge of boats superintending operations, was in despair that 
only a portion of his 3d division had so far crossed the 
stream ; it would soon be day, and they were liable to be 
attacked at any moment. He therefore sent instructions to 
the several organizations of his command to make at once for 
Sedan, each independently of the others, by the most direct 
roads, while he himself, leaving orders to burn the bridge of 


THE DOWNFALL 


155 


boats, took the road on the left bank with his 2d division 
and the artillery, and the 3d division pursued that on the 
right bank; the ist, that had felt the enemy’s claws at Beau- 
mont, was flying in disorder across the country, no one knew 
where. Of the 7th corps, that had not seen a battle, all that 
remained were those scattered, incoherent fragments, lost 
among lanes and by-roads, running away in the darkness. 

It was not yet three o’clock, and the night was as black as 
ever. Maurice, although he knew the country, could not 
make out where they were in the noisy, surging throng that 
filled the road from ditch to ditch, pouring onward like a 
brawling mountain stream. Interspersed among the regiments 
were many fugitives from the rout at Beaumont, in ragged 
uniforms, begrimed with blood and dirt, who inoculated the 
others with their own terror. Down the wide valley, from the 
wooded hills across the stream, came one universal, all- 
pervading uproar, the scurrying tramp of other hosts in swift 
retreat; the ist corps, coming from Carignan and Douzy, the 
1 2th flying from Mouzon with the shattered remnants of the 
5th, moved like puppets and driven onward, all of them, by 
that one same, inexorable, irresistible pressure that since the 
28th had been urging the army northward and driving it into 
the trap where it was to meet its doom. 

Day broke as Maurice’s company was passing through Pont 
Maugis, and then he recognized their locality, the hills of Liry 
to the left, the Meuse running beside the road on the right. 
Bazeilles and Balan presented an inexpressibly funereal aspect, 
looming among the exhalations of the meadows in tire chill, 
wan light of dawn, while against the somber background of her 
great forests Sedan was profiled in livid outlines, indistinct as 
the creation of some hideous nightmare. When they had left 
Wadelincourt behind them and were come at last to the Torcy 
gate, the governor long refused them admission; he only 
yielded, after a protracted conference, upon their threat to 
storm the place. It was five o’clock when at last the 7th 
corps, weary, cold, and hungry, entered Sedan. 


THE DOWNFALL 


15^ 


VIII. 

I N the crush on the Place de Torcy that ensued upon the 
entrance of the troops into the city Jean became separated 
from Maurice, and all his attempts to find him again among the 
surging crowd were fruitless. It was a piece of extreme ill- 
luck, for he had accepted the young man’s invitation to go 
with him to his sister’s, where there would be rest and food 
for them, and even the luxury of a comfortable bed. The 
confusion was so great — the regiments disintegrated, no dis- 
cipline, and no officers to enforce it — that the men were free to 
do pretty much as they pleased. There was plenty of time to 
look about them and hunt up their commands; they would 
have a few hours of sleep first. 

Jean in his bewilderment found himself on the viaduct of 
Torcy, overlooking the broad meadows which, by the gov- 
ernor’s orders, had been flooded with water from the river. 
Then, passing through another archway and crossing the Pont 
de Meuse, he entered the old, rampart-girt city, where, among 
the tall and crowded houses and the damp, narrow streets, it 
seemed to him that night was descending again, notwithstand- 
ing the increasing daylight. He could not so much as 
remember the name of Maurice’s brother-in-law; he only 
knew that his sister’s name was Henriette. The outlook was 
not encouraging; all that kept him awake was the automatic 
movement of walking; he felt that he should drop were he to 
stop. The indistinct ringing in his ears was the same that is 
experienced by one drowning; he was only conscious of the 
ceaseless onpouring of the stream of men and animals that car- 
ried him along with it on its current. He had partaken of 
foQd at Remilly, sleep was now his great necessity; and the 
same was true of the shadowy bands that he saw flitting past 
him in those strange, fantastic streets. At every moment a 
man would sink upon the sidewalk or tumble into a doorway, 
and there would remain, as if struck by death. 

Raising his eyes, Jean read upon a signboard: Avenue de 
la Sous-Prefecture. At the end of the street was a monument 
standing in a public garden, and at the corner of the avenue 
he beheld a horseman, a chasseur d’Afrique, whose face 
seemed familiar to him. Was it not Prosper, the young man 
from Remilly, whom he had seen in Maurice’s company at 
Vouziers? Perhaps he had been sent in with dispatches. He 


rUR DOWN RAIL 


had dismounted, and his skeleton of a horse, so weak that he 
could scarcely stand, was trying to satisfy his hunger by gnaw- 
ing at the tail-board of an army wagon that was drawn up 
against the curb. There had been no forage for the animals 
for the last two days, and they were literally dying of starva- 
tion. The big. strong teeth rasped pitifully on the wood- 
work of the wagon, while the soldier stood by and wept as he 
watched the poor brute. 

Jean was moving away when it occurred to him that the 
trooper might be able to give him the address of Maurice’s 
sister. ^ He returned, but the other was gone, and it would 
have been useless to attempt to find him in that dense throng. 
He was utterly disheartened, and wandering aimlessly from 
street to street at last found himself again before the Sous- 
Pr^fecture, whence he struggled onward to the Place Turenne. 
Here he was comforted for an instant by catching sight of 
Lieutenant Rochas, standing in front of the Hotel de Ville 
with a few men of his company, at the foot of the statue he 
had seen before; if he could not find his friend he could at 
all events rejoin the regiment and have a tent to sleep under. 
Nothing had been seen of Captain Beaudoin; doubtless he 
had been swept away in the press and landed in some place 
far away, while the lieutenant was endeavoring to collect his 
scattered men and fruitlessly inquiring of everyone he met 
where division headquarters were. As he advanced into the 
city, however, his numbers, instead of increasing, dwindled. 
One man, with the gestures of a lunatic, entered an inn and 
w'as seen no more. Three others were halted in front of a 
grocer’s shop by a party of zouaves who had obtained posses- 
sion of a small cask of brandy; one was already lying sense- 
less in the gutter, while the other two tried to get away, but 
were too stupid and dazed to move. Loubet and Chouteau 
had nudged each other with the elbow and disappeared down 
a blind alley in pursuit of a fat woman with a loaf of bread, 
so that all wdio remained with the lieutenant were Pache and 
Lapoulle, with some ten or a dozen more. 

Rochas was standing by the base of the bronze statue of 
Turenne, making heroic efforts to keep his eyes open. When 
he recognized Jean he murmured: 

“Ah, is it you, corporal.? Where are your men?’’ 

Jean, by a gesture expressive in its vagueness, intimated 
that he did not know, but Pache, pointing to Lapoulle, 
answered with tears in his eyes : 


THE DOWHEALL 


“Here we are; there are none left but us two. The merci- 
ful Lord have pity on our sufferings; it is too hard I” 

The other, the colossus with the colossal appetite, looked 
hungrily at Jean’s hands, as if to reproach them for being 
always empty in those days. Perhaps, in his half-sleeping 
state, he had dreamed that Jean was away at the commissary’s 
for rations. 

“D n the luck!” he grumbled, “we’ll have to tighten 

up our belts another hole!” 

Gaude, the bugler, was leaning against the iron railing, 
waiting for the lieutenant’s order to sound the assembly; 
sleep came to him so suddenly that he slid from his position 
and within a second was lying flat on his back, unconscious. 
One by one they all succumbed to the drowsy influence and 
snored in concert, except Sergeant Sapin alone, who, with his 
little pinched nose in his small pale face, stood staring with 
distended eyes at the horizon of that strange city, as if trying 
to read his destiny there. 

Lieutenant Rochas meantime had yielded to an irresistible 
impulse and seated himself on the ground. He attempted to 
give an order. 

“Corporal, you will — you will ” 

And that was as far as he could proceed, for fatigue sealed 
his lips, and like the rest he suddenly sank down and was lost 
in slumber. 

Jean, not caring to share his comrades’ fate and pillow his 
head on the hard stones, moved away; he was bent on finding 
a bed in which to sleep. At a window of the Hotel of the 
Golden Cross, on the opposite side of the square, he caught 
a glimpse of General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, already half- 
undressed and on. the point of tasting the luxury of clean 
white sheets. Why should he be more self-denying than the 
rest of them? he asked himself; why should he suffer longer? 
And just then a name came to his recollection that caused him 
a thrill of delight, the name of the manufacturer in whose 
employment Maurice’s brother-in-law was. M. Delaherche! 
yes, that was it. He accosted an old man who happened to 
be passing. 

“Can you tell me where M. Delaherche lives?” 

“In the Rue Maqua, near the corner of the Rue au Beurre; 
you can’t mistake it; it is a big house, with statues in the 
garden.” 

The old man turned away, but presently came running 


THE DOWNFALL 


159 


back. “I see you belong to the io6th. If it is your regiment 
you are looking for, it left the city by the Chateau, down 
there. I just met the colonel, Monsieur de Vineuil; I used 
to know him when he lived at Mezieres.” 

But Jean went his way, with an angry gesture of impatience. 
No, no! no sleeping on the hard ground for him, now that he 
was certain of finding Maurice. And yet he could not help 
feeling a twinge of remorse as he thought of the dignified old 
colonel, who stood fatigue so manfully in spite of his years, 
sharing the sufferings of his men, with no more luxurious 
shelter than his tent. He strode across the Grande Rue with 
rapid steps and soon was in the midst of the tumult and 
uproar of the city; there he hailed a small boy, who con- 
ducted him to the Rue Maqua. 

There it was that in the last century a grand-uncle of the 
present Delaherche had built the monumental structure that 
had remained in the family a hundred and sixty years. 
There is more than one cloth factory in Sedan that dates back 
to the early years of Louis XV. ; enormous piles, they are, 
covering as much ground as the Louvre, and with stately 
fa9ades of royal magnificence. The one in the Rue Maqua 
was three stories high, and its tall windows were adorned with 
carvings of severe simplicity, while the palatial courtyard in 
the center was filled with grand old trees, gigantic elms that 
were coeval with the building itself. In it three generations 
of Delaherches had amassed comfortable fortunes for them- 
selves. The father of Charles, the proprietor in our time, had 
inherited the property from a cousin who had died without 
being blessed with children, so that it was now a younger 
branch that was in possession. The affairs of the house had 
prospered under the father’s control, but he was something of 
a blade and a roisterer, and his wife’s existence with him was 
not one of unmixed happiness; the consequence of which was 
that the lady, when she became a Avidow, not caring to see a 
repetition by the son of the performances of the father, made 
haste to find a wife for him in the person of a simple-minded 
and exceedingly devout young woman, and subsequently kept 
him tied to her apron string until he had attained the mature 
age of fifty and over. But no one in this transitory world can 
tell what time has in store for him ; when the devout young 
person’s time came to leave this life Delaherche, who had 
known none of the joys of youth, fell head over ears in love 
with a young widow of Cbarleville, pretty Madame Maginot, 


i6o 


THE DOWNFALL 


who had been the subject of some gossip in her day, and in 
the autumn preceding the events recorded in this history had 
married her, in spite of all his mother’s prayers and tears. It 
is proper to add that Sedan, which is very straitlaced in its 
notions of propriety, has always been inclined to frown on 
Charleville, the city of laughter and levity. And then again 
the marriage would never have been effected but for the fact 
that Gilberte’s uncle was Colonel de Vineuil, who it was sup- 
posed would soon be made a general. This relationship and 
the idea that he had married into army circles was to the cloth 
mamifacturer a source of great delight. 

That morning Delaherche, when he learned that the army 
was to pass through Mouzon, had invited Weiss, his account- 
ant, to accompany him on that carriage ride of which we have 
heard Father Fouchard speak to Maurice. Tall and stout, 
with a florid complexion, prominent nose and thick lips, he 
was of a cheerful, sanguine temperament and had all the 
French bourgeois' boyish love for a handsome display of 
troops. Having ascertained from the apothecary at Mouzon 
that the Emperor was at Baybel, a farm in the vicinity, he had 
driven up there, had seen the monarch, and even had been 
near speaking to him, an adventure of such thrilling interest 
that he had talked of it incessantly ever since his return. 
But what a terrible return that had been, over roads choked 
with the panic-stricken fugitives from Beaumont! twenty 
times their cabriolet was near being overturned into the ditch. 
Obstacle after obstacle they had encountered, and it was night 
before the two men reached home. The element of the tragic 
and unforeseen there was in the whole business, that army 
that Delaherche had driven out to pass in review and which 
had brought him home with it, whether he would or no, in the 
mad gallop of its retreat, made him repeat again and again 
during their long drive: 

“I supposed it was moving on Verdun and would have 
given anything rather than miss seeing it. Ah well! I have 
seen it now, and I am afraid we shall see more of it in Sedan 
than we desire.” 

The following morning he was awakened at five o’clock by 
the hubbub, like the roar of water escaping from a broken 
dam, made by the 7th corps as .it streamed through the city; 
he dressed in haste /and went out, and almost the first person 
he set eyes on in the Place Turenne was Captain Beaudoin. 
When pretty Madame Maginot wa§ living at Charleville the 


THE DOWNFALL 


i6i 


year before the captain had been one of her best friends, and 
Gilberte had introduced him to her husband before they were 
married. Rumor had it that the captain had abdicated his 
position as first favorite and made way for the cloth mer- 
chant from motives of delicacy, not caring to stand in the 
way of the great good fortune that seemed coming to his fair 
friend. 

“Hallo, is that you?’’ exclaimed Delaherche. “Good 
Heavens, what a state you’re in!’’ 

It was but too true; the dandified Beaudoin, usually so 
trim and spruce, presented a sorry spectacle that morning in 
his soiled uniform and with his grimy face and hands. 
Greatly to his disgust he had had a party of Turcos for travel- 
ing companions, and could not explain how he had become 
separated from his company. Like all the others he was 
ready to drop with fatigue and hunger, but that was not what 
most afflicted him ; he had not been able to change his linen 
since leaving Rheims, and was inconsolable. 

“Just think of it!’’ bewailed, “those idiots, those scoun- 
drels, lost my baggage at Vouziers. If I ever catch them I 
will break every bone in their body! And now I haven’t a 
thing, not a handkerchief, not a pair of socks! Upon my 
word, it is enough to make one mad!’’ 

Delaherche was for taking him home to his house forthwith, 
but he resisted. No, no; he was no longer a human being, 
he would not frighten people out of their wits. The manu- 
facturer had to make solemn oath that neither his wife nor his 
mother had risen yet; and besides he should have soap, 
water, linen, everything he needed. 

It was seven o’clock when Captain Beaudoin, having done 
what he could with the means at his disposal to improve his 
appearance, and comforted by the sensation of wearing under 
his uniform a clean shirt of his host’s, made his appearance in 
the spacious, high-ceiled dining room with its somber wainscot- 
ing. The elder Madame Delaherche was already there, for 
she was always on foot at daybreak, notwithstanding she was 
seventy-eight years old. Her hair was snowy white ; in her 
long, lean face was a nose almost preternaturally thin and 
sharp and a mouth that had long since forgotten how to laugh. 
She rose, and with stately politeness invited the captain to be 
seated before one of the cups of cafeau lait that stood on the table. 

“But, perhaps, sir, you would prefer meat and wine after 
the fatigue to which you have been subjected?” 


i 62 


THE DOWNFALL 


He declined the offer, however. “A thousand thanks, 
madame ; a little milk, with bread and butter, will be best for 
me.” 

At that moment a door was smartly opened and Gilberte 
entered the room with outstretched hand. Delaherche must 
have told her who was there, for her ordinary hour of rising 
was ten o’clock. She was tall, lithe of form and well- 
proportioned, with an abundance of handsome black hair, a 
pair of handsome black eyes, and a very rosy, wholesome 
complexion withal; she had a laughing, rather free and easy 
way with her, and it did not seem possible she could ever look 
angry. Her peignoir of beige^ embroidered with red silk, was 
evidently of Parisian manufacture. 

“Ah, Captain,” she rapidly said, shaking hands with the 
young man, “how nice of you to stop and see us, away up in 
this out-of-the-world place!” But she was the first to see that 
she had ‘‘put her foot in it” and laugh at her own blunder. 
‘‘Oh, what a stupid thing I am! I might know you would 
rather be somewhere else than at Sedan, under the circum- 
stances. But I am very glad to see you once more.” 

She showed it; her face was bright and animated, while 
Madame Delaherche, who could not have failed to hear some- 
thing of the gossip that had been current among the scandal- 
mongers of Charleville, watched the pair closely with her 
puritanical air. The captain was very reserved in his behav- 
ior, however, manifesting nothing more than a pleasant recol- 
lection of hospitalities previously received in the house where 
he was visiting. 

They had no more than sat down at table than Delaherche, 
burning to relieve himself of the subject that filled his mind, 
commenced to relate his experiences of the day before. 

‘‘You know I saw the Emperor at Baybel.” 

He was fairly started and nothing could stop him. He 
began by describing the farmhouse, a large structure with an 
interior court, surrounded by an iron railing, and situated on 
a gentle eminence overlooking Mouzon, to the left of the 
Carignan road. Then he came back to the 12th corps, whom 
he had visited in their camp among the vines on the hillsides; 
splendid troops they were, with their equipments brightly 
shining in the sunlight, and the sight of them had caused his 
heart to beat with patriotic ardor. 

“And there I was, sir, when the Emperor, who had alighted 
to breakfast and rest himself a bit, came out of the farmhouse. 


THE DOWNFALL 


163 

He wore a general's uniform and carried an overcoat across 
his arm, although the sun was very hot. He was followed by 
a servant bearing a camp stool. He did not look to me like 
a well man; ah no, far from it; his stooping form, the sallow- 
ness of his complexion, the feebleness of his movements, all 
indicated him to be in a very bad way. I was not surprised, 
for the druggist at Mouzon, when he recommended me to 
drive on to Baybel, told me that an aide-de-camp had just 
been in his shop to get some medicine — you understand what 

I mean, medicine for ” The presence of his wife and 

mother prevented him from alluding more explicitly to the 
nature of the Emperor’s complaint, which was an obstinate 
diarrhea that he had contracted at Chene and which com- 
pelled him to make those frequent halts at houses along the 
road. “Well, then, the attendant opened the camp stool and 
placed it in the shade of a clump of trees at the edge of a field 
of wheat, and the Emperor sat down on it. Sitting there in a 
limp, dejected attitude, perfectly still, he looked for all the 
world like a small shopkeeper taking, a sun bath for his rheu- 
matism. His dull eyes wandered over the wide horizon, the 
Meuse coursing through the valley at his feet, before him the 
range of wooded heights whose summits recede and are lost in 
the distance, on the left the waving tree-tops of Dieulet forest, 
on the right the verdure-clad eminence of Sommanthe. He 
was surrounded by his military family, aides and officers of 
rank, and a colonel of dragoons, who had already applied to 
me for information about the country, had just motioned me 

not to go away, when all at once ’’ Delaherche rose from 

his chair, for he had reached the point where the dramatic 
interest of his story culminated and it became necessary to 
re-enforce words by gestures. “All at once there is a succes- 
sion of sharp reports and right in front of us, over the wood 
of Dieulet, shells are seen circling through the air. It pro- 
duced on me no more effect than a display of fireworks in 
broad daylight, sir, upon my word it didn’t! The people 
about the Emperor, of course, showed a good deal of agitation 
and uneasiness. The colonel of dragoons comes running up 
again to ask if I can give them an idea whence the firing pro- 
ceeds. I answer him off-hand; ‘It is at Beaumont; there is 
not the slightest doubt about it.’ He returns to the Emperor, 
on whose knees an aide-de-camp was unfolding a map. The 
Emperor was evidently of opinion that the fighting was not at 
Beaumont, for he sent the colonel back to me a third time. 


i64 


THE downfall 


But I couldn’t well do otherwise than stick to what I had said 
before, could I, now? the more that the shells kept flying 
through the air, nearer and nearer, following the line of the 
Mouzon road. And then, sir, as sure as I see you standing 
there, I saw the Emperor turn his pale face toward me. Yes 
sir, he looked at me a moment with those dim eyes of his, that 
were filled with an expression of melancholy and distrust. 
And then his face declined upon his map again and he made 
no further movement.” 

Delaherche, although he was an ardent Bonapartist at the 
time of the plebiscite; had admitted after our early defeats that 
the government was responsible for some mistakes, but he 
stood up for the dynasty, compassionating and excusing 
Napoleon III., deceived and betrayed as he was by everyone. 
It was his firm opinion that the men at whose door should 
be laid the responsibility for all our disasters were none other 
than those Republican deputies of the opposition who had 
stood in the way of voting the necessary men and money. 

‘‘And did the Emperor return to the farmhouse?” asked 
Captain Beaudoin. 

‘‘That’s more than I can say, my dear sir; I left him sitting 
on his stool. It was midday, the battle was drawing nearer, 
and it occurred to me that it was time to be thinking of my 
own return. All that I can tell you besides is that a general 
to whom I pointed out the position of Carignan in the dis- 
tance, in the plain to our rear, appeared greatly surprised to 
learn that the Belgian frontier lay in that direction and was 
only a few miles away. Ah, that the poor Emperor should 
have to rely on such servants!” 

Gilberte, all smiles, was giving her attention to the captain 
and keeping him supplied with buttered toast, as much at ease 
as she had ever been in bygone days when she received him in 
her salon during her widowhood. She insisted that he should 
accept a bed with them, but he declined, and it was agreed 
that he should rest for an hour or two on a sofa in Dela- 
herche’s study before going out to find his regiment. As he 
was taking the sugar bowl from the young woman’s hands old 
Madame Delaherche, who had kept her eye on them, dis- 
tinctly saw him squeeze her fingers, and the old lady’s suspi- 
cions were confirmed. At that moment a servant came to the 
door. 

‘‘Monsieur, there is a soldier outside who wants to know the 
address of Monsieur Weiss.” 


THE DOWN PALL 


There was nothing “stuck-up” about Delaherche, people 
said ; he was fond of popularity and was always delighted to 
have a chat with those of an inferior station. 

‘‘He wants Weiss’s address ! that’s odd. Bring the soldier 
in here.” 

Jean entered the room in such an exhausted state that he 
reeled as if he had been drunk. He started slightly with 
astonishment at seeing his captain seated at the table with two 
ladies, and involuntarily withdrew the hand that he had 
extended toward a chair in order to steady himself; he replied 
briefly to the questions of the manufacturer, who played his 
part of the soldier’s friend with great cordiality. In a few 
words he explained his relation toward Maurice and the 
reason why he was looking for him. 

‘‘He is a corporal in my company,” the captain finally said 
by way of cutting short the conversation, and inaugurated a 
series of questions on his own account to learn what had 
become of the regiment. As Jean went on to tell that the 
colonel had been seen crossing the city to reach his camp at 
the head of what few men were left him, Gilberte again 
thoughtlessly spoke up, with the vivacity of a woman whose 
beauty is supposed to atone for her indiscretion : 

‘‘Oh ! he is my uncle; why does he not come and breakfast 
with us? We could fix up a room for him here. Can’t we 
send someone for him?” 

But the old lady discouraged the project with an authority 
there was no disputing. The good old bourgeois blood of the 
frontier towns flowed in her veins; her austerely patriotic sen- 
timents were almost those of a man. She broke the stern 
silence that^he had preserved during the meal by saying: 

‘‘Never mind Monsieur de Vineuil; he is doing his duty.’' 

Her short speech was productive of embarrassment among 
the party. Delaherche conducted the captain to his study, 
where he saw him safely bestowed upon the sofa; Gilberte 
moved lightly off about her business, no more disconcerted by 
her rebuff than is the bird that shakes its wings in gay defiance 
of the shower; while the handmaid to whom Jean had been 
intrusted led him by a very labyrinth of passages and stair- 
cases through the various departments of the factory. 

The Weiss family lived in the Rue des Voyards, but their 
house, which was Delaherche’s property, communicated with 
the great structure in the Rue Maqua. The Rue des Voyards 
was at that time one of the most squalid streets in Sedan, 


i66 


THE DOWNFALL 


being nothing more than a damp, narrow lane, its normal 
darkness intensified by the proximity of the ramparts, which 
ran parallel to it. The roofs of the tall houses almost met, 
the dark passages were like the mouths of caverns, and more 
particularly so at that end where rose the high college walls. 
Weiss, however, with free quarters and free fuel on his third 
floor, found the location a convenient one on account of its 
nearness to his office, to which he could descend in slippers 
without having to go around by the street. His life had been 
a happy one since his marriage with Henriette, so long the 
object of his hopes and wishes since first he came to know her 
at Chene, filling her dead mother’s place when only six years 
old and keeping the house for her father, the tax-colle-ctor ; 
while he, entering the big refinery almost on the footing of a 
laborer, was picking up an education as best he could, and 
fitting himself for the accountant’s position which was the 
reward of his unremitting toil. And even when he had 
attained to that measure of success his dream was not to be 
realized; not until the father had been removed by death, not 
until the brother at Paris had been guilty of those excesses: 
that brother Maurice to whom his twin sister had in some sort 
made herself a servant, to whom she had sacrificed her little 
all to make him a gentleman — not until then was Henriette to 
be his wife. She had never been aught more than a little 
drudge at home ; she could barely read and write ; she had sold 
house, furniture, all she had, to pay the young man’s debts, 
when good, kind Weiss came to her with the offer of his sav- 
ings, together with his heart ana his two strong arms; and she 
had accepted him with grateful tears, bringing him in return 
for his devotion a steadfast, virtuous affection, replete with 
tender esteem, if not the stormier ardors of a passionate love. 
Fortune had smiled on them ; Delaherche had spoken of giv- 
ing Weiss an interest in the business, and when children should 
come to bless their union their felicity would be complete. 

“Look out!’’ the servant said to Jean; “the stairs are 
steep.’’ 

He was stumbling upward as well as the intense darkness 
of the place would let him, when suddenly a door above was 
thrown open, a broad belt of light streamed out across the 
landing, and he heard a soft voice saying: 

“It is he.’’ 

“Madame Weiss,’’ cried the servant, “here is a soldier who 
has been inquiring for you.’’ 


THE DOWNFALL 


167 


There came the sound of a low, pleased laugh, and the 
same soft voice replied: 

“Good! good! I know who it is.” Then to the corporal, 
who was hesitating, rather diffidently, on the landing: ‘‘Come 
in. Monsieur Jean. Maurice has been here nearly two hours, 
and we have been wondering what detained you.” 

Then, in the pale sunlight that filled the room, he saw how 
I ^ like she was to Maurice, with that wonderful resemblance that/' 
often makes twins so like each other as to be indistinguishable. 
She was smaller and slighter than he, however; more fragile iii 
appearance, with a rather large mouth and delicately molde( 
features, surmounted by an opulence of the most beautiful haij 
imaginable, of the golden yellow of ripened grain. The fea 
ture where she least resembled him was her gray eyes, great 
calm, brave orbs, instinct with the spirit of the grandfather, 
the hero of the Grand Army. She used few words, was noise- 
less in her movements, and was so gentle, so cheerful, soi 
helpfully active that where she passed her presence seemed to 
Uinger in the air, like a fragrant caress. 

‘‘Come this way. Monsieur Jean,” she said. ‘‘Everything 
will soon be ready for you.” 

He stammered something inarticulately, for his emotion was 
; such that he could find no word of thanks. In addition to 
I that his eyes were closing he beheld her through the irresisti- ; 
I ble drowsiness that was settling on him as a sea fog drifts in ' 
\ and settles on the land, in which she seemed floating in a ; 
vvague, unreal way, as if her feet no longer touched the earth. ? 
Could it be that it was all a delightful apparition, that friendly! 
young woman who smiled on him with such sweet simplicity?! 
He fancied for a moment that she had touched his hand andi 
that he had felt the pressure of hers, cool and firm, loyal asi 
the clasp of an old tried friend. ! 

: That was the last moment in which Jean was distinctly con- ; 

iscious of what was going on about him. They were in the i 
^lining room; bread and meat were set out on the table, but | 
l(or the life of him he could not have raised a morsel to his i 
lips. A man was there, seated on a chair. Presently he knew ^ 
ii was Weiss, whom he had seen at Mtilhausen, but he had no j 
idea what the man was saying with such a sober, sorrowful 
air, with slow and emphatic gestures. Maurice was already_ 
sound asleep, with the tranquillity of death resting on his face, 
on a bed that had been improvised for him beside the stove, 
and Henriette was busying herself about a sofa on which a 


i68 


THE DOWNFALL 


mattress had been thrown ; she brought in a bolster, pillow 
and coverings ; with nimble, dexterous hands she spread the 
white sheets, snowy white, dazzling in their whiteness. 

Ah ! those clean, white sheets, so long coveted, so ardently 
desired; Jean had eyes for naught save them. For six weeks 
he had not had his clothes off, had not slept in a bed. He 
was as impatient as a child waiting for some promised treat, 
or a lover expectant of his mistress’s coming; the time seemed 
long, terribly long to him, until he 'could plunge into those 
cool, white depths and lose himself there. Quickly, as soon 
as he was alone, he removed his shoes and tossed his uniform 
across a chair, then, with a deep sigh of satisfaction, threw 
himself on the bed. He opened his eyes a little way for a last 
look about him before his final plunge into unconsciousness, 
and in the pale morning light that streamed in through the 
lofty window beheld a repetition of his former pleasant vision, 
only fainter, more aerial ; a vision of Henriette entering the 
room on tiptoe, and placing on the table at his side a water-jug 
and glass that had been forgotten before. She seemed to lin- 
ger there a moment, looking at the sleeping pair, him and her 
brother, with her tranquil, ineffably tender smile upon her 
lips, then faded into air, and he, between his white sheets, was 
as if he were not. 

Hours — 'or was it years? slipped by; Jean and Maurice 
were like dead men, without a dream, without consciousness 
of the life that was within them. Whether it was ten years or 
ten minutes, time had stood still for them ; the overtaxed body 
had risen against its oppressor and annihilated their every 
faculty. They awoke simultaneously with a great start and 
looked at each other inquiringly; where were they? what had 
happened? how long had they slept? The same pale light was 
entering through the tall window. They felt as if they had 
been racked; joints stiffer, limbs wearier, mouth more hot and 
dry than when they had lain down ; they could not have 
slept more than an hour, fortunately. It did not surprise 
them to see Weiss sitting where they had seen him before, in 
the same dejected attitude, apparently waiting for them to 
awake. 

''Fichtre!" exclaimed Jean, “we must get up and report 
ourselves to the first sergeant before noon.’’ 

He uttered a smothered cry of pain as he jumped to the 
floor and began to dress. 

“Before noon!’’ said Weiss. “iVre you aware that it is 


THE DOWNFALL 169 

seven o’clock in the evening? You have slept about twelve 
hours.” 

Great heavens, seven o’clock! They were thunderstruck. 
Jean, who by that time was completely dressed, would have 
run for it, but Maurice, still in bed, found he no longer had 
control of his legs; how were they ever to find their comrades? 
would not the army have marched away? They took Weiss 
to task for having let them sleep so long. But the accountant 
shook his head sorrowfully and said : 

“You have done just as well to remain in bed, for all that 
has been accomplished.” 

All that day, from early morning, he had been scouring 
Sedan and its environs in quest of news, and was just come in, 
discouraged with the inactivity of the troops and the inexpli- 
cable delay that had lost them the whole of that precious day, 
the 31st. The sole excuse was that the men were worn out 
and rest was an absolute necessity for them, but granting that, 
he could not see why the retreat should not have been contin- 
ued after giving them a few hours of repose. 

‘T do not pretend to be a judge of such matters,” he con- 
tinued, “but I have a feeling, so strong as to be almost a 
conviction, that the army is very badly situated at Sedan. 
The 1 2th corps is at Bazeilles, where there was a little fighting 
this morning; the ist is strung out along the Givonne between 
la Moncelle and Holly, while the 7th is encamped on the 
plateau of Floing, and the 5th, what is left of it, is crowded 
together under the ramparts of the city, on the side of the 
Chateau. And that is what alarms me, to see them all con- 
centrated thus about the city, waiting for the coming of the 
Prussians. If I were in command I would retreat on Mezieres, 
and lose no time about it, either. I know the country; it is 
the only line of retreat that is open to us, and if we take any 
other course we shall be driven into Belgium. Come here! 
let me show you something.” 

He took Jean by the hand and led him to the window. 

‘‘Tell me what you see over yonder on the* crest of the 
hills.” 

Looking from the window over the ramparts, over the adja- 
cent buildings, their view embraced the valley of the Meuse to 
the southward of Sedan. There was the river, winding 
through broad meadows; there, to the left, was Remilly in 
the background, Pont Maugis and Wadelincourt before them 
and Frenois to the right; and shutting in the landscape the 


THE DOWNFALL 


170 

ranges of verdant hills, Liry first, then la Marfee and la Croix 
Piau, with their dense forests. A deep tranquillity, a crystal- 
line clearness reigned over the wide prospect that lay there in 
the mellow light of the declining day. 

“Do you see that moving line of black upon the hilltops, 
that procession of small black ants?” 

Jean stared in amazement, while Maurice, kneeling on his 
bed, craned his neck to see. 

“Yes, yes!” they cried. “There is aline, there is another, 
and another, and another! They are everywhere.” 

“Well,” continued Weiss, “those are Prussians. I have 
been watching them since morning, and they have been com- 
ing, coming, as if there were no end to them! You may be 
sure of one thing: if our troops are waiting for them, they 
have no intention of disappointing us. And not I alone, but 
every soul in the city saw thenj; it is only the generals who 
persist in being blind. I was talking with a general officer a 
little while ago ; he shrugged his shoulders and told me that 
Marshal MacMahon was absolutely certain that he had not 
over seventy thousand men in his front. God grant he may 
be right! But look and see for yourselves; the ground is hid 
by them! they keep coming, ever coming, the black swarm!” 

At this juncture Maurice threw himself back in his bed and 
gave way to a violent fit of sobbing. Henriette came in, a 
smile on her face. She hastened to him in alarm. 

“What is it?” 

But he pushed her away. “No, no! leave me, have noth- 
ing more to do with me; I have never been anything but a 
burden to you. When I think that you were making yourself 
a drudge, a slave, Avhile I was attending college — oh ! to what 
miserable use have I turned that education ! And I was near 
bringing dishonor on our name; I shudder to think where I 
might be now, had you not beggared yourself to pay for my 
extravagance and folly.” 

Her smile came back to her face, together with her serenity. 

“Is that all? Your sleep don’t seem to have done you 
good, my poor friend. But since that is all gone and past, 
forget it! Are you not doing your duty now, like a good 
Frenchman? I am very proud of you, I assure you, now that 
you are a soldier.” 

She had turned toward Jean, as if to ask him to come to her 
assistance, and he looked at her with some surprise that she 
appeared to him less beautiful than yesterday ; she was paler, 


THE DOWNFALL 


171 

thinner, now that the glamour was no longer in his drowsy 
eyes. The one striking point that remained unchanged was 
her resemblance to her brother, and yet the difference in their 
two natures was never more strongly marked than at that 
moment; he, weak and nervous as a woman, swayed by the 
impulse of the hour, displaying in his person all the fitful and 
emotional temperament of his nation, vibrating from one 
moment to another between the loftiest enthusiasm and the 
most abject despair; she, the patient, indomitable housewife, 
such an inconsiderable little creature in her resignation and 
self-effacement, meeting adversity with a brave face and eyes 
full of inexpugnable courage and resolution, fashioned from 
the stuff of which heroes are made. 

“Proud of me!” cried Maurice. “Ah! truly, you have 
great reason to be. For a month and more now we have been 
flying, like the cowards that we are!” 

“What of it? we are not the only ones,” said Jean with his 
practical common sense; “we do what we are told to do.” 

But the young man broke out more furiously than ever: “I 
have had enough of it, I tell you ! Our imbecile leaders, our 
continual defeats, our brave soldiers led like sheep to the 
slaughter — is it not enough, seeing all these things, to make 
one weep tears of blood? We are here now in Sedan, caught 
in a trap from which there is no escape; you can see the 
Prussians closing in on us from every (quarter, and certain 
destruction is staring us in the face; there is no hope, the end 
is come. No! I shall remain where I am; I may as well be 
shot as a deserter. Jean, do you go, and leave me here. No! 
I won’t go back there; I will stay here.” 

He sank upon the pillow in a renewed outpour of tears. It 
was an utter breakdown of the nervous system, sweeping 
everything before it, one of those sudden lapses into hopeless- 
ness to which he was so subject, in which he despised himself 
and all the world. His sister, knowing as she did the best 
way of treating such crises, kept an unruffled face. 

“That would not be a nice thing to do, dear Maurice — 
desert your post in the hour of danger.” 

He rose impetuously to a sitting posture: “Then give me 
my musket ! I will go and blow my brains out ; that will be 
the shortest way of ending it.” Then, pointing with out- 
stretched arm to Weiss, where he sat silent and motionless, he 
said: “There! that is the only sensible man I have seen; 
yes, he is the only one who saw things as they were. You 


172 


THE DOWNFALL 


remember what he said to me, Jean, at Miilhausen, a month 
ago?” 

“It is true,” the corporal assented; “the gentleman said 
we should be beaten.” 

And the scene rose again before their mind’s eye, that night 
of anxious vigil, the agonized suspense, the prescience of the 
disaster at Froesch wilier hanging in the sultry heavy air, 
while the Alsatian told his prophetic fears; Germany in 
readiness, with the best of arms and the best of leaders, rising 
to a man in a grand outburst of patriotism; France dazed, a 
century behind the age, debauched, and a prey to intestine 
disorder, having neither commanders, men, nor arms to enable 
her to cope with her powerful adversary. How quickly the 
horrible prediction had proved itself true ! 

Weiss raised his trembling hands. Profound sorrow was 
depicted on his kind, honest face, with its red hair and beard 
and its great prominent blue eyes. 

“Ah!” he murmured, “I take no credit to myself for being 
right. I don’t claim to be wiser than others, but it was all so 
clear, when one only knew the true condition of affairs! But 
if we are to be beaten we shall first have the pleasure of killing 
some of those Prussians of perdition. There is that comfort 
for us; I believe that many of us are to leave their bones 
there, and I hope there will be plenty of Prussians to keep 
them company; I would like to see the ground down there in 
the valley heaped with dead Prussians!” He arose and 
pointed down the valley of the Meuse. Fire flashed from his 
myopic eyes, which had exempted him from service with the 
army. ‘‘A thousand thunders! I would fight, yes, I would, 
if they would have me. I don’t know whether it is seeing 
them assume the airs of masters in my country — in this country 
where once the Cossacks did such mischief; but whenever I 
think of their being here, of their entering our. houses, I am 
seized with an uncontrollable desire to cut a dozen of their 
throats. Ah ! if it were not for my eyes, if they would take 
me, I would go!” Then, after a moment’s silence: “And 
besides, who can tell?” 

It was the hope that sprang eternal, even in the breast of 
the least confident, of the possibility of victory, and Maurice, 
ashamed by this time of his tears, listened and caught at the 
pleasing speculation. Was it not true that only the day before 
there had been a rumor that Bazaine was at Verdun? Truly, 


THE DOWNFALL 


^73 

it was time that Fortune should work a miracle for that France 
whose glories she had so long protected. Henriette, with an 
imperceptible smile on her lips, silently left the room, and was 
not the least bit surprised when she returned to find her 
brother up and dressed, and ready to go back to his duty. 
She insisted, however, that he and Jean should take some 
nourishment first. They seated themselves at the table, but 
the morsels choked them; their stomachs, weakened by their 
heavy slumber, revolted at the food. Like a prudent old 
campaigner Jean cut a loaf in two halves and placed one in 
Maurice’s sack, the other in his own. It was growing dark, 
it behooved them to be going. Henriette, who was standing 
at the window watching the Prussian troops incessantly defil- 
ing on distant la Marfee, the swarming legions of black ants 
that were gradually being swallowed up in the gathering 
shadows, involuntarily murmured: 

“Oh, war! what a dreadful thing it is!” 

Maurice, seeing an opportunity to retort her sermon to him, 
immediately took her up: 

“How is this, little sister? you are anxious to have people 
fight, and you speak disrespectfully of war*!’’ 

She turned and faced him, valiantly as ever: “It is true; I 
abhor it, because it is an abomination and an injustice. It 
may be simply because I am a woman, but the thought of such 
butchery sickens me. Why cannot nations adjust their differ- 
ences without shedding blood?’’ 

Jean, the good fellow, seconded her with a nod of the head, 
and nothing to him, too, seemed easier — to him, the unlettered 
man — than to come together and settle matters after a fair, 
honest talk; but Maurice, mindful of his scientific theories, 
reflected on the necessity of war — war, which is itself existence, 
the universal law. Was it not poor, pitiful man who con- 
ceived the idea of justice and peace, while impassive nature 
revels in continual slaughter? 

“That is all very fine!” he cried. “Yes, centuries hence, 
if it shall come to pass that then all the nations shall be 
merged in one; centuries hence man may look forward to the 
coming of that golden age; and even in that case would not 
the end of war be the end of humanity? I was a fool but 
now; we must go and fight, since it is nature’s law.” He 
smiled and repeated his brother-in-law’s expression: “And 
besides, who can tell?” 


J74 


THE DOWNFALL 


He saw things now through the mirage of his vivid self- 
delusion, they came to his vision distorted through the lens of 
his diseased nervous sensibility. 

“By the way,” he continued cheerfully, ‘‘what do you hear 
of our cousin Gunther? You know we have not seen a Ger- 
man yet, so you can’t look to me to give you any foreign 
news. ” 

The question was addressed to his brother-in-law, who had 
relapsed into a thoughtful silence and answered by a motion 
of his hand, expressive of his ignorance. 

‘‘Cousin Gunther?” said Henriette, ‘‘Why, he belongs to 
the Vth corps and is with the Crown Prince’s army; I read it 
in one of the newspapers, I don’t remember which. Is that 
army in this neighborhood?” 

Weiss repeated his gesture, which was imitated by the two 
soldiers, who could not be supposed to know what enemies 
were in front of them when their generals did not know. 
Rising to his feet, the master of the house at last made use of 
articulate speech. 

‘‘Come along; I will go with you. I learned this afternoon 
where the io6th’s *camp is situated.” He told his wife that 
she need not expect to see him again that night, as he would 
sleep at Bazeilles, where they had recently bought and fur- 
nished a littje place to serve them as a residence during the 
hot months. It was near a dyehouse that belonged to 
M. Delaherche. The accountant’s mind was ill at ease in 
relation to certain stores that he had placed in the cellar — a 
cask of wine and a couple of sacks of potatoes; the house 
would certainly be visited by marauders if it was left unpro- 
tected, he said, while by occupying it that night he would 
doubtless save it from pillage. His wife watched him closely 
while he was speaking. 

”You need not be alarmed,” he added, with a smile; ‘‘I 
harbor no darker design than the protection of our property, 
and I pledge my word that if the village is attacked, or if 
there is any appearance of danger, I will come home at once.” 

“Well, then, go,” she said. ‘‘But remember, if you are 
not back in good season you will see me out there looking for 
you.” 

Henriette went with them to the door, where she embraced 
Maurice tenderly and gave Jean a warm clasp of the hand. 

‘‘I intrust my brother to your care once more. He has told 
me of your kindness to him, and I love you for it.” 


TBE DOWNFALL 


m 

He was too flustered to do more than return the pressure of 
the small, firm hand. His first impression returned to him 
again, antd he beheld Henriette in the light in which she had 
first appeared to him, with her bright hair of the hue of ripe 
golden grain, so alert, so sunny, so unselfish, that her presence 
seemed to pervade the air like a caress. 

Once they were outside they found the same gloomy and 
forbidding Sedan that had greeted their eyes that morning. 
Twilight with its shadows had invaded the narrow streets, 
sidewalk and carriage-way alike were filled with a confused, 
surging throng. Most of the shops were closed, the houses 
seemed to be dead or sleeping, while out of doors the crowd 
was so dense that men trod on one another. With some little 
difficulty, however, they succeeded in reaching the Place de 
I’Hotel de Ville, where they encountered M. Delaherche, 
intent on picking up the latest news and seeing what was to 
be seen. He at once came up and greeted them, apparently 
delighted to meet Maurice, to whom he said that he had just 
returned from accompanying Captain Beaudoin over to Floing, 
where the regiment was posted, and he became, if that were 
possible, even more gracious than ever upon learning that 
Weiss proposed to pass the night at Bazeilles, where he him- 
self, he declared, had just been telling the captain that he 
intended to take a bed, in order to see how things were look- 
ing at the dyehouse. 

“We’ll go together and be company for each other, Weiss. 
But first let’s go as far as the Sous-Prefecture; we may be 
able to catch a glimpse of the Emperor.’’ 

Ever since he had been so near having the famous conver- 
sation with him at Baybel his mind had been full of Napoleon 
HI. ; he was. not satisfied until he had induced the two sol- 
diers to accompany him. The Place de la Sous-Prefecture 
was comparatively empty; a few men were standing about in 
groups, engaged in whispered conversation, while occasionally 
an officer hurried by, haggard and careworn. The bright 
hues of the foliage were beginning to fade and grow dim in the 
melancholy, thick-gathering shades of night ; the hoarse mur- 
mur of the Meuse was heard as its current poured onward 
beneath the houses to the right. Among the whisperers it was 
related how the Emperor — who with the greatest difficulty had 
been prevailed on to leave Carignan the night before about 
eleven o’clock — when entreated to push on to Mezieres had 
refused point-blank to abandon the post of danger and take a 


176 


THE DOWHEALL 


step that would prove so demoralizing to the troops. Others 
asserted that he was no longer in the city, that he had fled, 
leaving behind him a dummy emperor, one of his officers 
dressed in his uniform, a man whose startling resemblance to 
his imperial master had often puzzled the army. Others 
again declared, and called upon their honor to substantiate 
their story, that they had seen the army wagons containing the 
imperial treasure, one hundred millions, all in brand-new 
twenty-franc pieces, drive into the courtyard of the Prefecture. 
This convoy was, in fact, neither more nor less than the vehi- 
cles for the personal use of the Emperor and his suite, the 
char a banc^ the two calhhes^ the twelve baggage and supply 
wagons, which had almost excited a riot in the villages through 
which they had passed — Courcelles, le Chene, Raucourt; 
assuming in men’s imagination the dimensions of a huge train 
that had blocked the road and arrested the march of armies, 
and which now, shorn of their glory, execrated by all, had 
come in shame and disgrace to hide themselves among the 
sous-prefect’s lilac bushes. 

While Delaherche was raising himself on tiptoe and trying 
to peer through the windows of the rez-de-chaussee^ an old 
woman at his side, some poor day- worker of the neighborhood, 
with shapeless form and hands calloused and distorted by 
many years of toil, was mumbling between her teeth: 

“An emperor — I should like to see one once — just once — so 
I could say I had seen him.” 

Suddenly Delaherche exclaimed, seizing Maurice by the arm : 

“See, there he is! at the window, to the left. I had a 
good view of him yesterday; I can’t be mistaken. There, he 
has just raised the curtain ; see, that pale face, close to the 
glass.” 

The old woman had overheard him and stood staring with 
wide-open mouth and eyes, for there, full in the window, was 
an apparition that resembled a corpse more than a living 
being; its eyes were lifeless, its features distorted ; even the 
mustache had assumed a ghastly whiteness in that final agony. 
The old woman was dumfounded; forthwith she turned her 
back and marched off with a look of supreme contempt. 

‘‘That thing an emperor! a likely story.” 

A zouave was standing near, one of those fugitive soldiers 
who were in no haste to rejoin their commands. Brandishing 
his chassepot and expectorating threats and maledictions, he 
said to his companion: 


THE DOWNEALL 


177 


“Wait! see me put a bullet in his head!” 

Delaherche remonstrated angrily, but by that time the 
Emperor had disappeared. The hoarse murmur of the 
Meuse continued uninterruptedly ; a wailing lament, inexpres- 
sibly mournful, seemed to pass above them through the air, 
where the darkness was gathering intensity. Other sounds 
rose in the distance, like the hollow muttering of the rising 
storm; were they the ‘‘March! march!” that terrible order 
from Paris that had driven that ill-starred man onward day by 
day, dragging behind him along the roads of his defeat the 
irony of his imperial escort, until now he was brought face to 
face with the ruin he had foreseen and come forth to meet? 
What multitudes of brave men were to lay down their lives for 
his mistakes, and how complete the wreck, in all his being, of 
that sick man, that sentimental dreamer, awaiting in gloomy 
silence the fulfillment of his destiny ! 

Weiss and Delaherche accompanied the two soldiers to the 
plateau of Floing, where the 7th corps camps were. 

‘‘Adieu!” said Maurice as he embraced his brother-in-law. 

“No, no; not adieu, the deuce! Au revoir ! " the manu- 
facturer gayly cried. 

Jean’s instinct led him at once to their regiment, the tents 
of which were pitched behind the cemetery, where the ground 
of the plateau begins to fall away. It was nearly dark, but 
there was sufficient light yet remaining in the sky to enable 
them to distinguish the black huddle of roofs above the city, 
and further in the distance Balan and Bazeilles, lying in the 
broad meadows that stretch away to the range of hills between 
Remilly and Frenois, while to the right was the dusky wood of 
la Garenne, and to the left the broad bosom of the Meuse had 
the dull gleam of frosted silver in the dying daylight. Mau- 
rice surveyed the broad landscape that was momentarily fad- 
ing in the descending shadows. 

“Ah, here is the corporal!” said Chouteau. ‘‘I wonder if 
he has been looking after our rations!” 

The camp was astir with life and bustle. All day the men 
had been coming in, singly and in little groups, and the crowd 
and confusion were such that the officers made no pretense of 
punishing or even reprimanding them; they accepted thank- 
fully those who were so. kind as to return and asked no ques- 
tions. Captain Beaudoin had made his appearance only a 
short time before, and it was about two o’clock when Lieu- 
tenant Rochas had brought in his collection of stragglers, 


THE DOWNFALL 


178 

about one-third of the company strength. Now the ranks 
were nearly full once more. Some of the men were drunk, 
others had not been able to secure even a morsel of bread and 
were sinking from inanition; again there had been no distri- 
bution of rations. Loubet, however, had discovered some cab- 
bages in a neighboring garden, and cooked them after a fashion, 
but there was no salt or lard; the empty stomachs continued 
to assert their claims. 

“Come, now, corporal, you are a knowing old file,” Chou- 
teau tauntingly continued, “what have you got for us? Oh, 
it’s not for myself I care; Loubet and I had a good break- 
fast; a lady gave it us. You were not at distribution, then?” 

Jean beheld a circle of expectant eyes bent on him; the 
squad had been waiting for him with anxiety, Pache and 
Lapoulle in particular, luckless dogs, who had found nothing 
they could appropriate; they all relied on him, who, as they 
expressed it, could get bread out of a stone. And the cor- 
poral’s conscience smote him for having abandoned his men ; 
he took pity on them and divided among them half the bread 
that he had in his sack. 

“Name o’ God! Name o’ God!’’ grunted Lapoulle as he 
contentedly munched the dry bread; it was all he could find 
to say; while Pache repeated a Pater and an Ave under his 
breath to make sure that Heaven should not forget to send 
him his breakfast in the morning. 

Gaude, the bugler, with his darkly mysterious air, as of a 
man who has had troubles of which he does not care to speak, 
sounded the call for evening muster with a glorious fanfare; 
but there was no necessity for sounding taps that night, the 
camp was immediately enveloped in profound silence. And 
when he had verified the names and seen that none of his half- 
section were missing, Sergeant Sapin, with his thin, sickly face 
and his pinched nose, softly said: 

“There will be one less to-morrow night.’’ 

Then, as he saw Jean looking at him inquiringly, he added 
with calm conviction, his eyes bent upon the blackness of the 
night, as if reading there the destiny that he predicted : 

“It will be mine; I shall be killed to-morrow.’’ 

It was nine o’clock, with promise of ,a chilly, uncomfort- 
able night, for a dense mist had risen from the surface of the 
river, so that the stars were no longer visible. Maurice shiv- 
ered, where he lay with Jean beneath a hedge, and said they 
would do better to go and seek the shelter of the tent; the rest 


THE DOWNFALL 


179 


they had taken that day had left them wakeful, their joints 
seemed stiffer and their bones sorer than before; neither could 
sleep. They envied Lieutenant Rochas, who, stretched on 
the damp ground and wrapped in his blanket, was snoring like 
a trooper, not far away. For a long time after that they 
watched with interest the feeble light of a candle that was 
burning in a large tent where the colonel and some officers 
were in consultation. All that evening M. de Vineuil had 
manifested great uneasiness that he had received no instruc- 
tions to guide him in the morning. He felt that his regiment 
was too much “in the air,” too much advanced, although 
it had already fallen back from the exposed position that 
it had occupied earlier in the day. Nothing had been 
seen of General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, who was said to be ill 
in bed at the inn of the Golden Cross, and the colonel decided 
to send one of his officers to advise him of the danger of their 
new position in the too extended line of the 7th corps, which 
had to cover the long stretch from the bend in the Meuse to 
the wood of la Garenne. There could be no doubt that the 
enemy would attack with the first glimpse of daylight; only 
for seven or eight hours now would that deep tranquillity 
remain unbroken. And shortly after the dim light in the 
colonel’s tent was extinguished Maurice was amazed to see 
Captain Beaudoin glide by, keeping close to the hedge, with 
furtive steps, and vanish in the direction of Sedan. 

The darkness settled down on them, denser and denser; 
the chill mists rose from the stream and enshrouded every- 
thing in a dank, noisome fog. 

“Are you asleep, Jean?” 

Jean was asleep, and Maurice was alone. He could not 
endure the thought of going to the tent where Lapoulle and 
the rest of them were slumbering; he heard their snoring, 
responsive to Rochas’ strains, and envied them. If our great 
captains sleep soundly the night before a battle, it is like 
enough for the reason that their fatigue will not let them do 
otherwise. He was conscious of no sound save the equal, 
deep-drawn breathing of that slumbering multitude, rising from 
the darkening camp like the gentle respiration of some huge 
monster; beyond that all was void. He only knew that the 
5th corps was close at hand, encamped beneath the rampart, 
that the ist’s line extended from the wood of la Garenne to la 
Moncelle, while the 12th was posted on the other side of the 
city, at Bazeilles ; and all were sleeping ; the whole length of 


i8o 


THE DOWNFALL 


that long line, from the nearest tent to the most remote, for 
miles and miles, that low, faint murmur ascended in rhythmic 
unison from the dark, mysterious bosom of the night. Then 
outside this circle lay another region, the realm of the 
unknown, whence also sounds came intermittently to his ears, 
so vague, so distant, that Jie scarcely knew whether they were 
not the throbbings of his own excited pulses; the indistinct 
trot of cavalry plashing over the low ground, the dull rumble 
of gun and caisson along the roads, and, still more marked, 
the heavy tramp, of marching men; the gathering on the 
heights above of that black swarm, engaged in strengthening 
the mesfiies of their net, from which night itself had not served 
to divert them. And below, there by the river’s side, was 
there not the flash of lights suddenly extinguished, was not 
that the sound of hoarse voices shouting orders, adding to the 
dread suspense of that long night of terror while waiting for 
the coming of the dawn? 

Maurice put forth his hand and felt for Jean’s; at last he 
slumbered, comforted by the sense of human companionship. 
From a steeple in Sedan came the deep tones of a bell, slowly, 
mournfully, tolling the hour; then all was blank and void. 


PART SECOND. 


I. 

W EISS, in the obscurity of his little room at Bazeilles, was 
aroused by a commotion that caused him to leap from 
his bed. It was the roar of artillery. Groping about in the 
darkness he found and lit a candle to enable him to consult 
his watch : it was four o’clock, just beginning to be light. 
He adjusted his double eyeglass upon his nose and looked 
out into the main street of the village, the road that leads to 
Douzy, but it was filled with a thick cloud of something that 
resembled dust, which made it impossible to distinguish any- 
thing. He passed into the other room, the windows of which 
commanded a view of the Meuse and the intervening 
meadows, and saw that the cause of his obstructed vision was 
the morning mist arising from the river. In the distance, be- 
hind the veil of fog^, the guns were barking more fiercely 
across the stream. All at once a French battery, close at 
hand, opened in reply, with such a tremendous crash that the 
walls of the little house were shaken. 

Weiss’s house was situated near the middle of the village, 
on the right of the road and not far from the Place de 
I’Eglise. Its front, standing back a little from the street, 
displayed a single story with three windows, surmounted by 
an attic ; in the rear was a garden of some extent that sloped 
gently downward toward the meadows and commanded a 
wide panoramic view of the encircling hills, from Remilly to 
Fr^nois. Weiss, with the sense of responsibility of his new 
proprietorship strong upon him, had spent the night in bury- 
ing his provisions in the cellar and protecting his furniture, as 
far as possible, against shot and shell by applying mattresses 
to the windows, so that it was nearly two o’clock before he 
got to bed. His blood boiled at the idea that the Prussians 
might come and plunder the house, for which he had toiled so 
long and which had as yet afforded him so little enjoyment. 


i 82 


THE DOWNFALL 


He heard a voice summoning him from the street. 

“ I say, Weiss, are you awake?” 

He descended and found it was Delaherche, who had 
passed the night at his dyehouse, a large brick structure, 
next door to the accountant’s abode. The operatives had all 
fled, taking to the woods and making for the Belgian frontier, 
and there was no one left to guard the property but the 
woman concierge^ Frangoise Quittard by name, the widow of a 
mason ; and she also, beside herself with terror, would have 
gone with the others had it not been for her ten-year-old boy 
Charles, who was so ill with typhoid fever that he could not 
be moved. 

“I say,” Delaherche continued, ‘‘ do you hear that ? It is a 
promising beginning. Our best course is to get back to Sedan 
as soon as possible.” 

Weiss’s promise to his wife, that he would leave Bazeilles at 
the first sign of danger, had been given in perfect good faith, 
and he had fully intended to keep it ; but as yet there was only 
an artillery duel at long range, and the aim could not be accu- 
rate enough to do much damage in the uncertain, misty light 
of early morning. 

“ Wait a bit, confound it ! ” he replied. “ There is no hurry.” 

Delaherche, too, was curious to see what would happen ; 
his curiosity made him valiant. He had been so interested in 
the preparations for defending the place that he had not slept 
a wink. General Lebrun, commanding the 12th corps, had 
received notice that he would be attacked at daybreak, and 
had kept his men occupied during the night in strengthening 
the defenses of Bazeilles, which he had instructions to hold in 
spite of everything. Barricades had been thrown up across 
the Douzy road, and all the smaller streets ; small parties of 
soldiers had been thrown into the houses by way of garrison ; 
every narrow lane, every garden had become a fortress, and 
since three o’clock the troops, awakened from their slumbers 
without beat of drum or call of bugle in the inky blackness, 
had been at their posts, their chassepots freshly greased and 
cartridge boxes filled with the obligatory ninety rounds of 
ammunition. It followed that when the enemy opened their 
fire no one was taken unprepared, and the French batteries, 
posted to the rear between Balan and Bazeilles, immediately 
commenced to answer, rather with the idea of showing they 
were awake than for any other purpose, for in the dense fog 
that enveloped everything the practice was of the wildest. 


THE DOWNFALL 183 

“ The dyehouse will be well defended,” said Delaherche. 
“ I have a whole section in it. Come and see.” 

It was true ; forty and odd men of the infanterie de marine 
had been posted there under the command of a lieutenant, a 
tall, light-haired young fellow, scarcely more than a boy, but 
with an expression of energy and determination on his face. 
His men had already taken full possession of the building, 
some of them being engaged in loopholing the shutters of 
the ground-floor windows that commanded the street, while 
others, in the courtyard that overlooked the meadows in the 
rear, were breaching the wall for musketry. It was in this 
courtyard that Delaherche and Weiss found the young officer, 
straining his eyes to discover what was hidden behind the 
impenetrable mist. 

“ Confound this fog ! ” he murmured. We can’t fight 
when we don’t know where the enemy is.” Presently he asked, 
with no apparent change of voice or manner : “ What day of 
the week is this ? ” 

“ Thursday,” Weiss replied. 

“ Thursday, that’s so. Hanged if I don’t think the world 
might come to an end and we not know it ! ” 

But just at that moment the uninterrupted roar of the ar- 
tillery was diversified by a brisk rattle of musketry proceeding 
from the edge of the meadows, at a distance of two or three 
hundred yards. And at the same time there was a transforma- 
tion, as rapid and startling, almost, as the stage effect in a 
fairy spectacle : the sun rose, the exhalations of the Meuse 
were whirled away like bits of finest, filmiest gauze, and the 
blue sky was revealed, in serene limpidity, undimmed by a 
single cloud. It was the exquisite morning of a faultle.ss 
summer day. 

“ Ah ! ” exclaimed Delaherche, “ they are crossing the rail- 
way bridge. See, they are making their way along the track. 
How stupid of us not to have blown up the bridge ! ” 

The officer’s face bore an expression of dumb rage. The 
mines had been prepared and charged, he averred, but they 
had fought four hours the day before to regain possession 
of the bridge and then had forgot to touch them off. 

“ It is just our luck,” he curtly said. 

Weiss was silent, watching the course of events and en- 
deavoring to form some idea of the true state of affairs. The 
position of the French in Bazeilles was a very strong one. 
The village commanded the meadows, and was bisected by 


184 


THE DOWNFALL 


the Douzy road, which, turning sharp to the left, passed 
under the walls of the chateau, while another road, the one 
that led to the railway bridge, bent around to the right and 
forked at the Place de I’Eglise. There was no cover for 
any force advancing by these two approaches ; the Germans 
would be obliged to traverse the meadows and the wide, 
bare level that lay between the outskirts of the village 
and the Meuse ajid the railway. Their prudence in avoid- 
ing unnecessary risks was notorious, hence it seemed improb- 
able that the real attack would come from that quarter. They 
kept coming across the bridge, however, in deep masses, and 
that notwithstanding the slaughter that a battery of mitrail- 
leuses, posted at the edge of the village, effected in their 
ranks, and all at once those who had crossed rushed forward 
in open order, under cover of the straggling willows, the col- 
umns were re-formed and began to advance. It was from 
there that the musketry fire, which was growing hotter, had 
proceeded. 

“ Oh, those are Bavarians,” Weiss remarked. “ I recog- 
nize them by the braid on their helmets.” 

But there were other columns, moving to the right and 
partially concealed by the railway embankment, whose object, 
it seemed to him, was to gain the cover of some trees in the 
distance, whence they might descend and take Bazeilles in 
flank and rear. Should they succeed in effecting a lodgment 
in the park of Montivilliers, the village might become unten- 
able. This was no more than a vague, half-formed idea, 
that flitted through his mind for a moment and faded as rap- 
idly as it had come ; the attack in front was becoming more 
determined, and his every faculty was concentrated on the 
struggle that was assuming, with every moment, larger dimen- 
sions. 

Suddenly he turned his head and looked away to the 
north, over the city of Sedan, where the heights of Floing 
were visible in the distance. A battery had just commenced 
firing from that quarter ; the smoke rose in the bright sun- 
shine in little curls and wreaths, and the reports came to 
his ears very distinctly. It was in the neighborhood of five 
o’clock. 

“ Well, well,” he murmured, “ they are all going to have a 
hand in the business, it seems.” 

The lieutenant of marines, who had turned his eyes in the 
same direction, spoke up confidently : 


THE DOWHFaLL 185 

“ Oh ! Bazeilles is the key of the position. This is the spot 
where the battle will be won or lost.” 

“ Do you think so ? ” Weiss exclaimed. 

“ There is not the slightest doubt of it. It is certainly the 
marshal’s opinion, for he was here last night and told us that 
we must hold the village if it cost the life of every man of 
us.” 

Weiss slowly shook his head, and swept the horizon with a 
glance ; then in a low, faltering voice, as if speaking, to him- 
self, he said : 

“ No — no ! I am sure that is a mistake. I fear the danger 
lies in another quarter — where, or what it is, I dare not 
say ” 

He said no more. He simply opened wide his arms, like 
the jaws of a vise, then, turning to the north, brought his 
hands together, as if the vise had closed suddenly upon some 
object there. 

This was the fear that had filled his mind for the last twenty- 
four hours, for he was thoroughly acquainted with the country 
and had watched narrowly every movement of the troops dur- 
ing the previous day, and now, again, while the broad valley 
before him lay basking in the radiant sunlight, his gaze re- 
verted to the hills of the left bank, where, for the space of all 
one day and all one night, his eyes had beheld the black 
swarm of the Prussian hosts moving steadily onward to some 
appointed end. A battery had opened fire from Remilly, over 
to the left, but the one from which the shells were now begin- 
ning to reach the French position was posted at Pont-Maugis, 
on the river bank. He adjusted his binocle by folding the 
glasses over, the one upon the other, to lengthen its range 
and enable him to discern what was hidden among the recesses 
of the wooded slopes, but could distinguish nothing save the 
white smoke-wreaths that rose momently on the tranquil 
air and floated lazily away over the crests. That human tor- 
rent that he had seen so lately streaming over those hills, 
where was it now — where were massed those innumerable 
hosts ? At last, at the corner of a pine wood, above Noyers 
and Frenois, he succeeded in making out a little cluster of 
mounted men in uniform— some general, doubtless, and his 
staff. And off there to the west the Meuse curved in a great 
loop, and in that direction lay their sole line of retreat on 
M^zieres, a narrow road that traversed the pass of Saint- 
Albert, between that loop and the dark forest of Ardennes. 


i86 


THE DOIVNEALL 


While reconnoitering the day before he had met a general 
officer who, he afterward learned, was Ducrot, commanding 
the ist corps, on a by-road in the valley of Givonne, and had 
made bold to call his attention to the importance of that, their 
only line of retreat. If the army did not retire at once by 
that road while it was still open to them, if it waited until the 
Prussians should have crossed the Meuse at Donchery and 
come up in force to occupy the pass, it would be hemmed in 
and driven back on the Belgian frontier. As early even as 
the evening of that day the movement would have been too 
late. It was asserted that the uhlans had possession of the 
bridge, another bridge'that .had not been destroyed, for the 
reason, this time, that some one had neglected to provide the 
necessary powder. And Weiss sorrowfully acknowledged to 
himself that the human torrent, the invading horde, could now 
be nowhere «lse than on the plain of Donchery, invisible to 
him, pressing onward to occupy Saint-Albert pass, pushing 
forward its advanced guards to Saint-Menges and Floing, 
whither, the day previous, he had conducted Jean and 
Maurice. In the brilliant sunshine the steeple of Floing 
church appeared like a slender needle of dazzling whiteness. 

And off to the eastward the other arm of the powerful vise 
was slowly closing in on them. Casting his eyes to the north, 
where there was a stretch of level ground between the plateaus 
of Illy and of Floing, he could make out the line of battle of 
the 7th corps, feebly supported by the 5th, which was posted 
in reserve under the ramparts of the city ; but he could not 
discern what was occurring to the east, along the valley of the 
Givonne, where the ist corps was stationed, its line stretching 
from the wood of la Garenne to Daigny village. Now, how- 
ever, the guns were beginning to thunder in that direction 
also ; the conflict seeemed to be raging in Chevalier’s wood, 
in front of Daigny. His uneasiness was owing to reports that 
had been brought in by peasants the day previous, that the 
Prussian advance had reached Francheval, so that the move- 
ment which was being conducted at the west, by way of Don- 
chery, was also in process of execution at the east, by way of 
Francheval, and the two jaws of the viese would come together 
up there at the north, near the Calvary of Illy, unless the two- 
fold flanking movement could be promptly checked. He knew 
nothing of tactics or strategy, had nothing but his common 
sense to guide him ; but he looked with fear and trembling 
on that great triangle that had the Meuse for one of its sides. 


THE DOIVNFA/.L 


187 


and for the other two the 7th and ist corps on the north and 
east respectively, while the extreme angle at the south was 
occupied by the 12th at Bazeilles — all the three corps facing 
outward on the periphery of a semicircle, awaiting the appear- 
ance of an enemy who was to deliver his attack at some one 
point, where or when no one could say, but who, instead, fell 
on them from every direction at once. And at the very center 
of all, as at the bottom of a pit, lay the city of Sedan, her 
ramparts furnished with antiquated guns, destitute of ammu- 
nition and provisions. 

“Understand,” said Weiss, with a repetition of his previous 
gesture, extending his arms and bringing his hands slowly 
together, “that is how it will be unless your generals keep 
their eyes open. The movement at Bazeilles is only a 
feint ” 

But his explanation was confused and unintelligible to the 
lieutenant, who knew nothing of the country, and the young 
man shrugged his shoulders with an expression of impatience 
and disdain for the bourgeois in spectacles and frock coat who 
presumed to set his opinion against the marshal's. Irritated 
to hear Weiss reiterate his view that the attack on Bazeilles 
was intended only to mask other and more important move- 
ments, he finally shouted : 

“ Hold your tongue, will you ! We shall drive them all 
into the Meuse, those Bavarian friends of yours, and that is all 
they will get by their precious feint.” 

While they were talking the enemy’s skirmishers seemed to 
have come up closer ; every now and then their bullets were 
heard thudding against the dyehouse wall, and our men, 
kneeling behind the low parapet of the courtyard, were begin- 
ning to reply. Every second the report of a chassepot rang 
out, sharp and clear, upon the air. 

“ Oh, of course ! drive them. into the Meuse, by all means,” 
muttered Weiss, “and while we are about it we might as well 
ride them down and regain possession of the Carignan road.”, 
Then addressing himself to Delaherche, who had stationed 
himself behind the pump where he might be out of the way of 
the bullets : “ All the same, it would have been their wisest 
course to make tracks last night for Mezieres, and if I were in 
their place I would much rather be there than here. As it is, 
however, they have got to show fight, since retreat is out of 
the question now.” 

“ Are you coming .? ” asked Delaherche, who, notwithstand- 


i88 


THE DOWNFALL 


ing his eager curiosity, was beginning to iook pale in the face. 
“We shall be unable to get into the city if we remain here 
longer.” 

Yes, in one minute I will be with you.” 
j In spite of the danger that attended the movement he 
/ raised himself on tiptoe, possessed by an irresistible desire to 
see how things were shaping. On the right lay the meadows 
that had been flooded by order of the governor for the pro- 
' tection of the city, now a broad lake stretching from Torcy to 
Balan, its unruffled bosom glimmering in the morning sunlight 
with a delicate azure luster. The water did not extend as far 
as Bazeilles, however, and the Prussians had worked their 
. way forward across the fields, availing themselves of the 
I shelter of every ditch, of every little shrub and tree. They 
I were now distant some five hundred yards, and Weiss was im- 
I pressed by the caution with which they moved, the dogged 
Iresolution and patience with which they advanced, gaining 
ground inch by inch and exposing themselves as little as possi- 
ble. They had a powerful artillery fire, moreover, to sustain 
them ; the pure, cool air was vocal with the shrieking of shells. 
Raising his eyes he saw that the Pont-Maugis battery was not 
the only one that was playing on Bazeilles ; two others, posted 
half way up the hill of Liry, had opened fire, and their pro- 
jectiles not only reached the village, but swept the naked plain 
of la Moncelle beyond, where the reserves of the 12th corps 
were, and even the wooded slopes of Daigny, held by a divi- 
sion of the ist corps, were not beyond their range. There 
was not a summit, moreover, on the left bank of the stream 
that was not tipped with flame. 'Fhe guns seemed to spring 
spontaneously from the soil, like some noxious growth ; it was 
a zone of fire that grew hotter and fiercer every moment ; 
there were batteries at Noyers shelling Balan, batteries, at 
Wadelincourt shelling Sedan, and at Frenois, down under 
la Marfee, there was a battery whose guns, heavier than the 
rest, sent their missiles hurtling over the city to burst among 
the troops of the 7th corps on the plateau of Floing. Those 
hills that he had always loved so well, that he had supposed 
were planted there solely to delight the eye, encircling with 
their verdurous slopes the pretty, peaceful valley that lay be- 
neath, were now become a gigantic, frowning fortress, vomit- 
ing ruin and destruction on the feeble defenses of Sedan, and 
Weiss looked on them with terror and detestation. Why had 
gteps not been takeij to defend them the da^ before^ if their 


THE DOWNFALL 189 

leaders had suspected this, or why, rather, had they insisted on 
holding the position ? 

A sound of falling plaster caused him to raise his head ; a 
shot had grazed his house, the front of which was visible to 
him above the party wall. It angered him excessively, and 
he growled : 

“ Are they going to knock it about my ears, the brigands ! ” 

Then close behind him there was a little dull, strange sound 
that he had never heard before, and turning quickly he saw a 
soldier, shot through the heart, in the act of falling backward. 
There was a brief convulsive movement of the legs ; the 
youthful, tranquil expression of the face remained, stamped 
there- unalterably by the hand of death. It was the first 
casualty, and the accountant was startled by the crash of the 
musket falling and rebounding from the stone pavement of 
the courtyard. 

“ Ah, I have seen enough, I am going,” stammered Dela- 
herche. “ Come, if you are coming ; if not, I shall go with- 
out you.” 

The lieutenant, whom their presence made uneasy, spoke up : 

“ It will certainly be best for you to go, gentlemen. The 
enemy may attempt to carry the place at any moment.” 

Then at last, casting a parting glance at the meadows, 
where the Bavarians were still gaining ground, Weiss gave in 
and followed Delaherche, but when they had gained the 
street he insisted upon going to see if the fastening of his 
door was secure, and when he came back to his companion 
there was a fresh spectacle, which brought them both to a halt. 

At the end of the street, some three hundred yards from 
where they stood, a strong Bavarian column had debouched 
from the Douzy road and was charging up the Place de 
PEglise. The square was held by a regiment of sailor boys, 
who appeared to slacken their fire for a moment as if with 
the intention of drawing their assailants on ; then, when the 
close-massed column was directly opposite their front, a most 
surprising maneuver was swiftly executed : the men aban- 
doned their formation, some of them stepping from the ranks 
and flattening themselves against the house fronts, others 
casting them.selves prone upon the ground, and down the 
vacant space thus suddenly formed the mitrailleuses that had 
been placed in battery at the farther end poured a perfect 
hailstorm of bullets. The column disappeared as if it had 
been swept bodily from off the face of the earth. The re^ 


THE DOWNFALL 


190 

ciirabent men sprang to their feet with a bound and charged 
the scattered Bavc^rians with the bayonet, driving them and 
making the rout complete. Twice the maneuver was repeated, 
each time with the same success. Two women, unwilling to 
abandon their home, a small house at the corner of an inter- 
secting lane, were sitting at their window ; they laughed ap- 
provingly and clapped their hands, apparently glad to have 
an opportunity to behold such a spectacle. 

“ There, confound it ! ” Weiss suddenly said, “ I forgot to 
lock the cellar door ! I must go back. Wait for me ; I 
won’t be a minute.” 

There was no indication that the enemy contemplated a 
renewal of their attack, and Delaherche, whose curiosity was 
reviving after the shock it had sustained, was less eager to 
get away. He had halted in front of his dyehouse and was 
conversing with the concierge, who had come for a moment 
to the door of the room she occupied in the rez-de-chaussU. 

“My poor Franpoise, you had better come along with us. 
A lone woman among such dreadful sights — I can’t bear to 
think of it ! ” 

She raised her trembling hands. “ Ah, sir, I would have 
gone when the others went, indeed I would, if it had not 
been for my poor sick boy. Come in, sir, and look at 
him.” 

He did not enter, but glanced into the apartment from the 
threshold, and shook his head sorrowfully at sight of the 
little fellow in his clean, white bed, his face exhibiting the 
scarlet hue of the disease, and his glassy, burning eyes bent 
wistfully on his mother. 

“But why can’t you take him with you?” he urged. “I 
will find quarters for you in Sedan. Wrap him up warmly in 
a blanket, and come along wdth. us.” 

“Oh, no, sir, I cannot. The' doctor told me it would kill 
him. If only his poor father were alive ! but we two are all that 
are left, and we must live for each other. And then, perhaps 
the Prussians will be merciful ; perhaps they won’t harm a lone 
woman and a sick boy.” 

Just then Weiss reappeared, having secured his premises 
to his satisfaction. “There, I think it will trouble them 
some to get in now. Come on ! And it is not going to be 
a very pleasant journey, either ; keep close to the houses, 
unless you want to come to grief.” 

There were indications, indeed, that the enemy were mak- 


THE DOWNFALL 


tQi 

ing ready for another assault. The infantry fire was splutter- 
ing away more furiously than ever, and the screaming of the 
shells was incessant. Two had already fallen in the street a 
hundred yards away, and a third had imbedded itself, without 
bursting, in the soft ground of the adjacent garden. 

“Ah, here is Fran9oise,” continued the accountant. “ I 
must have a look at your little Charles. Come, come, you 
have no cause for alarm ; he will be all right in a couple of 
days. Keep your courage up, and the first thing you do go 
inside, and don’t put your nose outside the door.” And the 
two men at last started to go. 

“ Au revoir, Franpoise.” 

“ Au revoir, sirs.” 

And as they spoke, there came an appalling crash. It was 
a shell, which, having first wrecked the chimney of Weiss’s 
house, fell upon the sidewalk, where it exploded with such ter- 
rific force as to break every window in the vicinity. At first 
it was impossible to distinguish anything in the dense cloud of 
dust and smoke that rose in the air, but presently this drifted 
away, disclosing the ruined fagade of the dyehouse, and there, 
stretched across the threshold, Fran9oise, a corpse, horribly 
torn and mangled, her skull crushed in, a fearful spectacle. 

Weiss sprang to her side. Language failed him ; he 
could only express his feelings by oaths and imprecations. 

“ Nom de Dieu ! Nom de Dieu ! ” 

Yes, she was dead. He had stooped to feel her pulse, and 
as he arose he saw before him the scarlet face of little 
Charles, who had raised himself in bed to look at his mother. 
He spoke no word, he uttered no cry ; he gazed with blazing, 
tearless eyes, distended as if they would start from their 
sockets, upon the shapeless mass that was strange, unknown to 
him ; and nothing more. 

Weiss found words at last: Nom de Dieu! they have 

taken to killing women ! ” 

He had risen to his feet ; he shook his fist at the Bavari- 
ans, whose braid-trimmed helmets were commencing to ap- 
pear again in the direction of the church. The chimney, in 
falling, had crushed a great hole in the roof of his house, and 
the sight of the havoc made him furious. 

“ Dirty loafers ! You murder women, you have destroyed 
my house. No, no ! I will not go now, I cannot ; I shall 
stay here.” 

He darted away and came running back with the dead sol- 


THE DOWHEALL 


19^ 

dier’s rifle and ammunition. He was accustomed to carry 
a pair of spectacles on his person for use on occasions of emer- 
gency, when he wished to see with great distinctness, but did 
not wear them habitually out of respect for the wishes of his 
young wife. He now impatiently tore off his double eyeglass 
and substituted the spectacles, and the big, burly bourgeois, 
his overcoat flapping about his legs, his honest, kindly, round 
face ablaze with wrath, who would have been ridiculous had he 
not been so superbly heroic, proceeded to open fire, peppering 
away at the Bavarians at the bottom of the street. It was in 
his blood, he said ; he had been been hankering for something 
of the kind ever since the days of his boyhood, down there 
in Alsace, when he had been told all those tales of 1814. 
“ Ah ! you dirty loafers ! you dirty loafers ! ” And he kept 
firing away with such eagerness that, finally, the barrel of his 
musket became so hot it burned his fingers. 

The assault was made with great vigor and determination. 
There was no longer any sound of musketry in the direction 
of the meadows. The Bavarians had gained possession of a 
narrow stream, fringed with willows and poplars, and were 
making preparations for storming the houses, or rather for- 
tresses, in the Place de TEglise. Their skirmishers had fallen 
back with the same caution that characterized their advance, 
and the wide grassy plain, dotted here and there with a black 
form where some poor fellow had laid down his life, lay spread 
in the mellow, slumbrous sunshine like a great cloth of gold. 
The lieutenant, knowing that the street was now to be the 
scene of action, had evacuated the courtyard of the dyehouse, 
leaving there only one man as guard. He rapidly posted his 
men along the sidewalk with instructions, should the enemy 
carry the position, to withdraw into the building, barricade the 
first floor, and defend themselves there as long as they had a 
cartridge left. The men fired at will, lying prone upon the 
ground, and sheltering themselves as best they might behind 
posts and every little projection of the walls, and the storm of 
lead, interspersed with tongues of flame and puffs of smoke, 
that tore through that broad, deserted, sunny avenue was like 
a downpour of hail beaten level by the fierce blast of winter. 
A wonian was seen to cross the roadway, running with wild, 
uncertain steps, and she escaped uninjured. Next, an old 
man, a peasant, in his blouse, who would not be satisfied until 
he saw his worthless nag stabled, received a bullet square in 
his forehead, and the violence of the impact was such that it 


THE DOWNFALL 


^93 

hurled him into the middle of the street. A shell had gone 
crashing through the roof of the church ; two others fell and 
set fire to houses, which burned with a pale flame in the in- 
tense daylight, with a loud snapping and crackling of their 
timbers. And that poor woman, who lay crushed and bleeding 
in the doorway of the house where her sick boy was, that old 
man with a bullet in his brain, all that work of ruin and devas- 
tation, maddened the few inhabitants who had chosen to end 
their days in their native village rather than seek safety in 
Belgium. Other bourgeois, and workingmen as well, the 
neatly attired citizen alongside the man in overalls, had pos- 
sessed themselves of the weapons of dead soldiers, and were 
in the street defending their firesides or firing vengefully from 
the windows. 

“Ah!” suddenly said Weiss, “the scoundrels have got 
around to our rear. I saw them sneaking along the railroad 
track. Hark ! don’t you hear them off there to the left ? ” 

The heavy fire of musketry that was now audible behind the 
park of Montivilliers, the trees of which overhung the road, 
made it evident that something of importance was occurring 
in that direction. Should the enemy gairL-possession of the 
park Bazeilles would be at their mercy, but the briskness of 
the firing was in itself proof that the general commanding the 
1 2th corps had anticipated the movement and that the posi- 
tion was adequately defended. 

“ Look out, there, you blockhead ! ” exclaimed the lieu- 
tenant, violently forcing Weiss up against the wall ; “ do you 
want to get yourself blown to pieces ? ” 

He could not help laughing a little at the queer figure of 
the big gentleman in spectacles, but his bravery had inspired 
him with a very genuine feeling of respect, so, when his prac- 
ticed ear. detected a shell coming their way, he had acted the 
part of a friend and placed the civilian in a safer position. 
The missile landed some ten paces from where they were and 
exploded, covering them both with earth and d 3 ris. The 
citizen kept his feet and received not so much as a scratch, 
while the officer had both legs broken. 

“It is well ! ” was all he said ; “they have sent me my 
reckoning !” 

He caused his men to take him across the sidewalk and 
place him with his back to the wall, near where the dead 
woman lay, stretched across her doorstep. His boyish face 
had lost nothing of its energy and determination. 


194 


THE DOWHPALL 


“ It don’t matter, my children ; listen to what I say. Don't 
fire too hurriedly ; take your time. When the time comes for 
you to charge, I will tell you.” 

And he continued to command them still, with head erect, 
watchful of the movements of the distant enemy. Another 
house was burning, directly across the street. The crash and 
rattle of musketry, the roar of bursting shells, rent the air, 
thick with dust and sulphurous smoke. Men dropped at the 
corner of every lane and alley ; corpses scattered here and 
there upon the pavement, singly or in little groups, made 
splotches of dark color, hideously splashed with red. And 
over the doomed village a frightful uproar rose and swelled, 
the vindictive shouts of thousands, devoting to destruction a 
few hundred brave men, resolute to die. 

Then Delaherche, who all this time had been frantically 
shouting to Weiss without intermission, addressed him one 
last appeal : 

“You won’t come ? Very well ! then I shall leave you to 
your fate. Adieu ! ” 

It was seven o’clock, and he had delayed his departure too 
long. So long as the houses were there to afford him shelter 
he took advantage of every doorway, of every bit of projecting 
wall, shrinking at every volley into cavities that were ridicu- 
lously small in comparison with his bulk. He turned and 
twisted in and out with the sinuous dexterity of the serpent ; 
he would never have supposed that there was so much of his 
youthful agility left in him. When he reached the end of the 
village, however, and had to make his way for a space of some 
three hundred yards along the deserted, empty road, swept by 
the batteries on Liry hill, although the perspiration was stream- 
ing from his face and body, he shivered and his teeth chat- 
tered. For a minute or so he advanced cautiously along the 
bed of a dry ditch, bent almost double, then, suddenly forsak- 
ing the protecting shelter, burst into the open and ran for it 
with might and main, wildly, aimlessly, his ears ringing with 
detonations that sounded to him like thunder-claps. His eyes 
burned like coals of fire; it seemed to him that he was wrapt in 
flame. It was an eternity of torture. Then he suddenly 
Caught sight of a little house to his left, and he rushed for the 
friendly refuge, gained it, with a sensation as if an immense 
load had been lifted from his breast. The place was tenanted, 
there were men and horses there. At first he could distin- 
guish nothing. What he beheld subsequently filled him with 
amazement. 


THE DOWNFALL 


195 


Was not that the Emperor, attended by his brilliant staff ? 
He hesitated, although for the last two days he had been 
boasting of his acquaintance with him, then stood staring, 
open-mouthed. It was indeed Napoleon III.; he appeared 
larger, somehow, and more imposing on horseback, and his 
mustache was so stiffly waxed, there was such a brilliant color 
on his cheeks, that Delaherche saw at once he had been “ made 
up ” and painted like an actor. He had had recourse to cos- 
metics to conceal from his army the ravages that anxiety and 
illness had wrought in his countenance, the ghastly pallor of 
his face, his pinched nose, his dull, sunken eyes, and having 
been notified at five o’clock that there was fighting at Bazeilles, 
had come forth to see, sadly and silently, like a phantom with 
rouged cheeks. 

There was a brick-kiln near by, behind which there was 
safety from the rain of bullets that kept pattering incessantly 
on its other front and the shells that burst at every second on 
the road. The mounted group had halted. 

“ Sire,” someone murmured, “ you are in danger ” 

But the Emperor turned and motioned to his staff to take 
refuge in the narrow road that skirted the kiln, where men 
and horses would be sheltered from the fire. 

“ Really, Sire, this is madness. Sire, we entreat you ” 

His only answer was to repeat his gesture ; probably he 
thought that the appearance of a group of brilliant uniforms 
on that deserted road would draw the fire of the batteries on 
the left bank. Entirely unattended he rode forward into the 
midst of the storm of shot and shell, calmly, unhurriedly, with 
his unvarying air of resigned indifference, the air of one who 
goes to meet his appointed fate. Could it be that he heard 
behind him the implacable voice that was urging him onward, 
that voice from Paris : “ March ! march ! die the hero’s death 
on the piled corpses of thy countrymen, let the whole world 
look on in awe-struck admiration, so that thy son may reign ! ” — 
.could that be what he heard ? He rode forward, controlling 
his charger to a slow walk. For the space of a hundred yards 
he thus rode forward, then halted, awaiting the death he had 
come there to seek. The bullets sang in concert with a music 
like the fierce autumnal blast ; a shell burst in front of him 
and covered him with earth. He maintained his attitude of 
patient waiting. His steed, with distended eyes and quiver- 
ing frame, instinctively recoiled before the grim presence who 
was so close at hand and yet refused to smite horse or rider. 


196 


THE DOWNFALL 


At last the trying experience came to an end, and the Em- 
peror, with his stoic fatalism, understanding that his time 
was not yet come, tranquilly retraced his steps, as if his only 
object had been to reconnoiter the position of the German 
batteries. 

“ What courage. Sire ! We beseech you, do not expose 
yourself further ” 

But, unmindful of their solicitations, he beckoned to his staff 
to follow him, not offering at present to consult their safety 
more than he did his own, and turned his horse’s head toward 
la Moncelle, quitting the road and taking the abandoned fields 
of la Ripaille. A captain was mortally wounded, two horses 
were killed. As he passed along the line of the 12th corps, 
appearing and vanishing like a specter, the men eyed him with 
curiosity, but did not cheer. 

To all these events had Delaherche been witness, and now 
he trembled at the thought that he, too, as soon as he should 
have left the brick works, would have to run the gauntlet of 
those terrible projectiles. He lingered, listening to the con- 
versation of some dismounted officers who had remained there. 

“ I tell you he was killed on the spot ; cut in two by a shell.” 

“ You are wrong, I saw him carried off the field. His 
wound was not severe ; a splinter struck him on the hip.” 

“ What time was it ? ” 

“Why, about an hour ago — say half-past six. It was up 
there around la Moncelle, in a sunken road.” 

“ I know he is dead.”* 

“ But I tell you he is not ! He even sat his horse for a 
moment after he was hit, then he fainted and they carried him 
into a cottage to attend to his wound.” 

“ And then returned to Sedan ? ” 

“ Certainly ; he is in Sedan now.” 

Of whom could they be speaking ? Delaherche quickly 
learned that it was of Marshal MacMahon, who had been 
wounded while paying a visit of inspection to his advanced 
posts. The marshal wounded I it was “just our luck,” as the 
lieutenant of marines had put it. He was reflecting on what 
the consequences of the mishap were likely to be when an 
estafette dashed by at top speed, shouting to a comrade, whom 
he recognized : 

“ General Ducrot is made commander-in-chief ! The army 
is ordered to concentrate at Illy in order fo retreat on 
zieres ! '* 


THE DOWNFALL 


197 


The courier was already far away, galloping into Bazeilles 
under the constantly increasing fire, when Delaherche, startled 
by the strange tidings that came to him in such quick succes- 
sion and not relishing the prospect of being involved in the 
confusion of the retreating troops, plucked up courage and 
started on a run for Balan, whence he regained Sedan without 
much difficulty. 

The estafette tore through Bazeilles on a gallop, dissemi- 
nating the news, hunting up the commanders to give them 
their instructions, and as he sped swiftly on the intelligence 
spread among the troops : Marshal MacMahon wounded. 
General Ducrot in command, the army falling back on Illy! 

“What is that they are saying?” cried Weiss, whose face 
by this time was grimy with powder. “ Retreat on Mezieres 
at this late hour I but it is absurd, they will never get 
through ! ” 

And his conscience pricked him, he repented bitterly having 
given that counsel the day before to that very general who 
was now invested with the supreme command. Yes, certainly, 
that was yesterday the best, the only plan, to retreat, without 
loss of a minute’s time, by the Saint-Albert pass, but now the 
way could be no longer open to them, the black swarms of 
Prussians had certainly anticipated them and were on the plain 
of Donchery, There were two courses left for them to pursue, 
both desperate ; and the most promising, as well as the bravest, 
of them was to drive the Bavarians into the Meuse, and cut 
their way through and regain possession of the Carignan road. 

Weiss, whose spectacles were constantly slipping down upon 
his nose, adjusted them nervously and proceeded to explain 
matters to the lieutenant, who was still seated against the wall 
with his two stumps of legs, very pale and slowly bleeding to 
death. 

“ Lieutenant, I assure you I am right. Tell your men to 
stand their ground. You can see for yourself that we are 
doing well. One more effort like the last, and we shall drive 
them into the river.” 

It was true that the Bavarians' second attack had been re- 
pulsed. The mitrailleuses had again swept the Place de 
I’Eglise, the heaps of corpses in the square resembled barri- 
cades, and our troops, emerging from every cross street, had 
driven the, enemy at the point of the bayonet through the 
meadows toward the river in headlong flight, which might easily 
have been converted into a general rout had there been fresh 


198 


THE DOWNFALL 


troops to support the sailor-boys, who had suffered severely 
and were by this time much distressed. And in Montivilliers 
Park, again, the firing did not seem to advance, which was a 
sign that in that quarter, also, reinforcements, could they have 
been had, would have cleared the wood. 

“ Order your men to charge them with the bayonet, lieu- 
tenant.” 

The waxen pallor of death was on the poor boy-officer’s face; 
yet he had strength to murmur in feeble accents : 

“ You hear, my children ; give them the bayonet ! ” 

It was his last utterance ; his spirit passed, his ingenuous, 
resolute face and his wide open eyes still turned on the battle. 
The flies already were beginning to buzz about Frangoise’s 
head and settle there, while lying on his bed little Charles, in an 
access of delirium, was calling on his mother in pitful, beseeclj- 
ing tones to give him something to quench his thirst. 

“ Mother, mother, awake ; get up — I am thirsty, I am so 
thirsty.” 

But the instructions of the new chief were imperative, and 
the officers, vexed and grieved to see the successes they had 
achieved thus rendered nugatory, had nothing for it but to give 
orders for the retreat. It was plain that the commander-in-chief, 
possessed by a haunting dread of the enemy’s turning move- 
ment, was determined to sacrifice everything in order to escape 
from the toils. The Place de I’Eglise was evacuated, the 
troops fell back from street to street ; soon the broad avenue 
was emptied of its defenders. Women shrieked and sobbed, 
men swore and shook their fists at the retiring troops, furious 
to see themselves abandoned thus. Many shut themselves in 
their houses, resolved to die in their defense. 

“ Well, / am not going to give up the ship ! ” shouted Weiss, 
beside himself with rage. “ No ! I will leave my skin here 
/X first. Let them come on ! let them come and smash my furni- 

I ture and drink my wine ! ” 

Wrath filled his mind to the exclusion of all else, a wild, 
I fierce desire to fight, to kill, at the thought that the hated 
foreigner should enter his house, sit in his chair, drink from 
his glass. It wrought a change in all his nature; everything 
I that went to make up his daily life — wife, business, the method- 
ical prudence of the small bourgeois — seemed suddenly to be- 
come unstable and drift away from him. And he shut him- 
sdf up in his house and barricaded it, he paced the empt^ 


THE downfall 


m 


^ apartments with the restless impatience of a caged wild beast, 

! going from room to room to make sure that all the doors and 
windows were securely fastened. He counted his cartridges 
and found he had forty left, then, as he was about to give a 
final look to the meadows to see whether any attack was to be 
apprehended from that quarter, the sight of the hills on the left 
' bank arrested his attention for a moment. The smoke-wreaths 
indicated distinctly the position of the Prussian batteries, and 
at the corner of a little wood on la Marfee, over the j^owerful 
battery at Frenois, he again beheld the group of uniforms, 
more nurq^rous than before, and so distinct in the bright sun- 
light that by supplementing his spectacles with his binocle he 
could make out the gold of their epaulettes and helmets. 

“ You dirty scoundrels, you dirty scoundrels ! ” he twice re- 
peated, extending his clenched fist in impotent menace. 

Those who were up there on la Marfee were King William 
and his staff. As early as seven o’clock he had ridden up 
from Vendresse, where he had had quarters for the night, and 
now was up there on the heights, out of reach of danger, while 
at his feet lay the valley of the Meuse and the vast panorama 
of the field of battle. Far as the eye could reach, from north 
to south, the bird’s-eye view extended, and standing on the 
summit of the hill, as from his throne in some colossal opera 
box, the monarch surveyed the scene. 

In the central foreground of the picture, and standing out 
in bold relief against the venerable forests of the Ardennes, 
that stretched away on either hand from right to left, filling 
the northern horizon like a curtain of dark verdure, was the 
city of Sedan, with the geometrical lines and angles of its 
fortifications, protected on the south and west by the flooded 
meadows and the river. In Bazeilles houses were already 
burning, and the dark cloud of war hung heavy oyer the 
pretty village. Turning his eyes eastward he might discover, 
holding the line between la Moncelle and Givonne, some 
regiments of the 12th and ist corps, looking like diminutive 
insects at that distance and lost to sight at intervals in the 
dip of the narrow valley in which the hamlets lay concealed ; 
and beyond that valley rose the further slope, an uninhab- 
ited, uncultivated heath, of which the pale tints made the dark 
green of Chevalier’s Wood look black by contrast. To the 
north the 7th corps was more distinctly visible in its position 
on the plateau of Floing, a broad belt of sere, dun fields, that 
sloped downward from the little wood of la Garenne to the 


TttE downfall 


266 

verdant border of the stream. Further still were Floingf, 
Saint-Menges, Fleigneux, Illy, small villages that lay nestled 
in the hollows of that billowing region where the landscape 
was a succession of hill and dale. And there, too, to the left 
was the great bend of the Meuse, where the sluggish stream, 
shimmering like molten silver in the bright sunlight, swept 
lazily in a great horseshoe around the peninsula of Iges and 
barred the road to Mezieres, leaving between its further bank 
and the ijpipassable forest but one single gateway, the defile 
of Saint-Albert. 

It was in that triangular space that the hundred^thousand 
men and five hundred guns of the French army had now 
been crowded and brought to bay, and when His Prussian 
Majesty condescended to turn his gaze still further to the 
westward he might perceive another plain, the plain of 
Donchery, a succession of bare fields stretching away toward' 
Briancourt, Marancourt, and Vrigne-aux-Bois, a desolate ex- 
panse of gray waste beneath the clear blue sky ; and did he 
turn him to the east, he again had before his eyes, facing the 
lines in which the French were so closely hemmed, a vast level 
stretch of country in which were numerous villages, first 
Douzy and Carignan, then more to the north Rubecourt, 
Pourru-aux-Bois, Francheval, Villers-Cernay, and last of all, 
near the frontier, Chapelle. All about him, far as he could 
see, the land was his ; he could direct the movements of the 
quarter of a million of men and the eight hundred guns that 
constituted his army, could master at a glance every detail of 
the operations of his invading host. Even then the Xlth 
corps was pressing forward toward Saint-Menges, while the Vth 
was at Vrigne-aux-Bois, and the Wurtemburg division was 
near Donchery, awaiting orders. This was what he beheld to 
the west, and if, turning to the east, he found his view ob- 
structed in that quarter by tree-clad hills, he could picture to 
himself what was passing, for he had seen the Xllth corps 
entering the wood of Chevalier, he knew that by that time the 
Guards were at Villers-Cernay. There were the two arms of 
the gigantic vise, the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia on 
the left, the Saxon Prince’s army on the right, slowly, irresist- 
ibly closing on each other, while the twQ Bavarian corps were 
hammering away at Bazeilles. 

Underneath the King’s position the long line of bat- 
teries, stretching with hardly an interval from Remilly to 
Fr^nois, kept up an unintermittent fire, pouring their shells 


THE DOWNFALL 


201 


into Daigny and la Moncelle, sending them hurtling over 
Sedan city to sweep the northern plateaus. It was barely 
eight o’clock, and with eyes fixed on the gigantic board he 
directed the movements of the game, awaiting the inevita- 
able end, calmly controlling the black cloud of men that be- 
neath him swept, an array of pigmies, athwart the smiling 
landscape. 


II. 

I N the dense fog up on the plateau of Floing Gaude, the 
bugler, sounded reveille at peep of day with all the lung- 
power he was possessed of, but the inspiring strain died away 
and was lost in the damp, heavy air, and the men, who had 
not had courage even to erect their tents and had thrown 
themselves, wrapped in their blankets, upon the muddy ground, 
did not awake or stir, but lay like corpses, their ashen features 
set and rigid in the slumber of utter exhaustion. To arouse 
them from their trance-like sleep they had to be shaken, one 
by one, and, with ghastly faces and haggard eyes, they rose 
to their feet, like beings summoned, against their will, back 
from another world. It was Jean who awoke Maurice. 

“ Wha\ is’ it ? Where are we ! ” asked the younger man. 
He looked affrightedly around him, and beheld only that gray 
waste, in which were floating the unsubstantial forms of his 
comrades. Objects twenty yards away were undistinguish- 
able ; his knowledge of the country availed him not ; he could 
not even have indicated in which direction lay Sedan. Just 
then, however, the boom of cannon, somewhere in the distance, 
fell upon his ear. “ Ah ! I remember ; the battle is for to- 
day ; they are fighting. So much the better ; there will be an 
end to our suspense ! ” 

He heard other voices around him expressing the same idea. 
There was a feeling of stern satisfaction that at last their long 
nightmare was to be dispelled, that at last they were to have 
a sight of those Prussians whom they had come out to look 
for, and before whom they had been retreating so many weary 
days ; that they were to be given a chance to try a shot at 
them, and lighten the load of cartridges that had been tugging 
at their belts so long, with never an opportunity to burn a 
single one of them. Everyone felt that, this time, the battle 
would not, could not be avoided. 


202 


THE DOWNFALL 


But the guns began to thunder more loudly down at Bazeilles, 
and Jean bent his ear to listen. 

“ Where is the firing? ” 

“ Faith,” replied Maurice, “ it seems to me to be over to- 
ward the Meuse ; but I’ll be hanged if I know where we are.” 

“ Look here, youngster,” said the corporal, you are going 
to stick close by me to-day, for unless a man has his wits about 
him, don’t you see, he is likely to get in trouble. Now, I 
have been there before, and can keep an eye out for both of 
u^” 

The others of the squad, meantime, were growling angrily 
because theyvbad nothing with which to warm their stomachs. 
There was no po's'sibil|ty of kindling fires without dry wood in 
such weather as prevailed then, and so, at the very moment 
when they were about to go into battle, the inner man put in 
his claim for recognition, and would not be denied. Hunger 
is not conducive to heroism ; to those poor fellows eating was 
the great, the momentous question of life ; how lovingly they 
watched the boiling pot on those red-letter days when the soup 
was rich and thick ; how like children or savages they were 
in their wrath when rations were not forthcoming ! 

“ No eat, no fight ! ” declared Chouteau. “ I’ll be blowed 
if I am going to risk my skin to-day ! ” 

The radical was cropping out again in the great hulking 
. house-painter, the orator of Belleville, the pothouse politician, 
who drowned what few correct ideas he picked up here and 
there in a nauseous mixture of ineffable folly and falsehood. 

“ Besides,” he went on, “ what good was there in making 
fools of us as they have been doing all along, telling us that 
the Prussians were dying of hunger and disease, that they had 
not so much as a shirt to their back, and were tramping along 
the highways like ragged, filthy paupers!” 

Loubet laughed the laugh of the Parisian gamin, who has 
experienced the various vicissitudes of life in the Halles. 

“ Oh, that’s all in my eye 1 it is we fellows who have been 
catching it right along ; we are the poor devils whose leaky 
brogans and tattered toggery would make folks throw us a 
copper. And then those great victories about which they 
made such a fuss 1 What precious liars they- must be, to tell 
us that old Bismarck had been made prisoneFand that a Ger- 
man army had been driven over a quarry and dashed to 
pieces I Oh yes, they fooled us in great shape.” 

Pache and Lapoulle, who were standing near, shook their 


THE DOWNFALL 


203 


heads and clenched their fists ominously. There were others, 
also, who made no attempt to conceal their anger, for the 
course of the newspapers in constantly printing bogus news 
had had most disastrous results ; all confidence was destroyed, 
men had ceased to believe anything or anybody. And so it 
w^s that in the soldiers, children of a larger growth, their 
bright dreams of other days had now been supplanted by ex- 
aggerated anticipations of misfortune. 

“ Pardi! ” continued Chouteau, “ the thing is accounted for 
easily enough, since our rulers have been selling us to the 
enemy right from the beginning. You all know that it is so.” 

Lapoulle’s rustic simplicity revolted at the idea. 

“ For shame ! what wicked people they must be ! ” 

‘‘ Yes, sold, as Judas sold his master,” murmured Pache, 
mindful of his studies in sacred history. 

It was Chouteau’s hour of triumph. Mon Dieu ! it is as 
plain as the nose on your face. MacMahon got three millions 
and each of the other generals got a million, as the price of 
bringing us up here. The bargain was made at Paris last 
spring, and last night they sent up a rocket as a signal to let 
Bismarck know that everything was fixed and he might come 
and take us.” 

The story was so inanely stupid that Maurice was disgusted. 
There had been a time when Chouteau, thanks to his facun- 
dity of the faubourg, had interested and almost convinced 
him, but now he had come to detest that apostle of falsehood, 
that snake in the grass, who calumniated honest effort of every 
kind in order to sicken others of it. 

“Why do you talk such nonsense ?” he exclaimed. “You 
know very well there is no truth in it.” 

“What,- not true ? Do you mean to say it is not true that 
we are betrayed ? Ah, come, my aristocratic friend, perhaps 

you are one of them, perhaps you belong to the d d band 

of dirty traitors ? ” He came forward threateningly. “ If you 
are you have only to say so, my fine gentleman, for we will 
attend to your case right here, and won’t wait for your friend 
Bismarck, either.” 

The others were also beginning to growl and show their 
teeth, and Jean thought it time that he should interfere. 

“ Silence there ! I will report the first man who says another 
word ! ” 

But Chouteau sneered and jeered at him ; what did he care 
whether he reported him or not ! He was not going to fight 


204 


THE DOWNFALL 


unless he chose, and they need not try to ride him rough-shod, 
because he had cartridges in his box for other people beside 
the Prussians. They were going into action now, and what 
discipline had been maintained by fear would be at an end : 
what could they do to him, anyway? he would just skip as 
soon as he thought he had enough of it. And he was profane 
and obscene, egging the men on against the corporal, who had 
been allowing them to starve. Yes, it was his fault that the 
squad had had nothing to eat in the last three days, while their 
neighbors had soup and fresh meat in plenty, but “ monsieur ” 
had to go off to town with the “ aristo ” and enjoy himself with 
the girls. People had spotted ’em, over in Sedan. 

“You stole the money belonging to the squad ; deny it if 
you dare, you bougre of a belly-god ! ” 

Things were beginning to assume an ugly complexion ; 
Lapoulle was doubling his big fists in a way that looked like 
business, and Pache, with the pangs of hunger gnawing at his 
vitals, laid aside his natural douceness and insisted on an ex- 
planation. The only reasonable one among them was Loubet, 
who gave one of his pawky laughs and suggested that, being 
Frenchmen, they might as well dine off the Prussians as eat 
one another. For his part, he took no stock in fighting, 
either with fists or firearms, and alluding to the few hundred 
francs that he had earned as substitute, added : 

“ And so, that was all they thought my hide was worth ! 
Well, I am not going to give them more than their money’s 
worth.” 

Maurice and Jean were in a towering rage at the idotic on- 
slaught, talking loudly and repelling Chouteau’s insinuations, 
when out from the fog came a stentorian voice, bellowing : 

“What’s this? what’s this? Show me the rascals who 
dare quarrel in the company street ! ” 

And Lieutenant Rochas appeared upon the scene, in his old 
ypi, whence the rain had washed all the color, and his great 
coat, minus many of its buttons, evincing in all his lean, 
shambling person the extreme of poverty and distress. Not- 
withstanding his forlorn aspect, however, his sparkling eye 
and bristling mustache showed that his old time confidence 
had suffered no impairment. 

Jean spoke up, scarce able to restrain himself . " Lieutenant, 
it is these men, who persist in saying that we are betrayed. 

Yes, they dare to assert that our generals have sold us ” 

The idea of treason did not appear so extremely unnatural 


THE DOWNFALL 


205 


to l^ochas's thick understanding, for it served to explain those 
reverses that he could not account for otherwise. 

“ Well, suppose they are sold, is it any of their business ? 
What concern is it of theirs ? The Prussians are there all the 
same, aren’t they ? and we are going to give them one of the 
old-fashioned hidings, such as they won’t forget in one while.” 
Down below -them in the thick sea of fog the guns at Bazeilles 
were still pounding away, and he extended his arms with a 
broad, sweeping gesture : ! this is the time that we’ve 

got them ! We’ll see them back home, and kick them every 
step of the way ! ” 

All the trials and troubles of the past were to him as if they 
had not been, now that his ears were gladdened by the roar of 
the guns : the delays and conflicting orders of the chiefs, the 
demoralization of the troops, the stampede at Beaumont, the 
distress of the recent forced retreat on Sedan — all were for- 
gotten. Now that they were about to fight at last, was not 
victory certain ? He had learned nothing and forgotten noth- 
ing ; his blustering, boastful contempt of the enemy, his entire 
ignorance of the new arts and appliances of war, his rooted 
conviction that an old soldier of Africa, Italy, and the Crimea 
could by no possibility be beaten, had suffered no change. It 
was really a little too comical that a man at his age should take 
the back track and begin at the beginning again ! 

All at once his lantern jaws parted and gave utterance to a 
loud laugh. He was visited by one of thgse impulses of good- 
fellowship that made his men swear by him, despite the rough- 
ness of the jobations that he frequently bestowed on them. 

“ Look here, my children, in place of quarreling it will be a 
great deal better to take a good nip all around. Come, I’m 
going to treat, and you shall drink my health.” 

From the capacious pocket of his capote he extracted a 
bottle of brandy, adding, with his all-conqueWng air, that it 
was the gift of a lady. (He had been seen the day before, 
seated at the table of a tavern in Floing and holding the 
waitress on his lap, evidently on the best of terms with her.) 
The soldiers laughed and winked at one another, holding out 
their porringers, into which he gayly poured the golden liquor. 

“ Drink to your sweethearts, my children, if you have any, 
and don’t forget to drink to the glory of France. Them’s my 
sentiments, so vive la joie ! ” 

“That’s right. Lieutenant. Here’s to your health, and 
■everybody else’s ! ” 


2o6 


THE DOWNFALL 


They all drank, and their hearts were warmed and peace 
reigned once more. The “ nip ” had much of comfort in it, 
in the chill morning, just as they were going into action, and 
Maurice felt it tingling in his veins, giving him cheer and a 
sort of what is known colloquially as “ Dutch courage.” Why 
should they not whip the Prussians ? Have not battles their 
surprises? has not history embalmed many an instance of the 
fickleness of fortune ? That mighty man of war, the lieu- 
tenant, added that Bazaine was on the way to join them, 
would be with them before the day was over : oh, the in- 
formation was positive ; he had it from an aid to one of the 
generals ; and although, in speaking of the route the marshal 
was to come by, he pointed to the frontier of Belgium, Maurice 
yielded to one of those spasmodic attacks of hopefulness of 
his, without which life to him would not have been worth liv- 
ing. Might it not be that the day of reckoning was at hand ? 

“ Why don’t we move. Lieutenant ? ” he made bold to ask. 
“What are we waiting for ?” 

Rochas made a gesture, which the other interpreted to 
mean that no orders had been received. Presently he asked : 

“ Has anybody seen the captain ? ” 

No one answered. Jean remembered perfectly having seen 
him making for Sedan the night before, but to the soldier who 
knows what is good for himself, his officers are always invisi- 
ble when they are not on duty. He held his tongue, there- 
fore, until happening to turn his head, he caught sight of a 
shadowy form flitting along the hedge. 

“ Here he is,” said he. 

It was Captain Beaudoin in the flesh. They were all sur- 
prised by the nattiness of his appearance, his resplendent 
shoes, his well-brushed uniform, affording such a striking con- 
trast to the lieutenant’s pitiful state. And there was a finick- 
ing completeness, moreover, about his toilet, greater than the 
male being is accustomed to bestow upon himself, in his scru- 
pulously white hands and his carefully curled mustache, and a 
faint perfume of Persian lilac, which had the effect of remind- 
ing one in some mysterious way of the dressing room of a 
young and pretty woman. 

“ Hallo ! ” said Loubet, with a sneer, “ the captain has re- 
covered his baggage ! ” 

But no one laughed, for they all knew him to be a man with 
whom it was not well to joke. He was stiff and consequential 
with his men, and was detested accordingly ; 2ipete sec, ’to use 


THE DOWNFALL 


207 


Rochas’s expression. He had seemed to regard the early re- 
verses of the campaign as personal affronts, and the disaster 
that all had prognosticated was to him an unpardonable crime. 
He was a strong Bonapartist by conviction ; his prospects for 
promotion were of the brightest ; he had several important 
salons looking after his interests ; naturally, he did not take 
kindly to the changed condition of affairs that promised to 
make his cake dough. He was said to have a remarkably fine 
tenor voice, which had helped him no little in his advance- 
ment. He was not devoid of intelligence, though perfectly 
ignorant as regarded everything connected with his profession ; 
eager to please, and very brave, when there was occasion for 
being so, without superfluous rashness. 

“ What a nasty fog ! was all he said, pleased to have found 
his company at last, for which he had been searching for more 
than half an hour. 

At the same time their orders came, and the battalion moved 
forward. They had to proceed with caution, feeling their way, 
for the exhalations continued to rise from the stream and 
were now so dense that they were precipitated in a fine, driz- 
zling rain. A vision rose before Maurice’s eyes that impressed 
him deeply ; it was Colonel de Vineuil, who loomed suddenly 
from out the mist, sitting his horse, erect and motionless, at 
the intersection of two roads — the man appearing of preter- 
natural size, and so pale and rigid that he might have served a 
sculptor as a study for a statue of despair ; the steed shivering 
in the raw, chill air of morning, his dilated nostrils turned in 
the direction of the distant firing. Some ten paces to their 
rear were the regimental colors, which the sous-lieutenant 
whose duty it was to bear them had thus early taken from their 
case and proudly raised aloft, and as the driving, vaporous 
rack eddied and swirled about them, they shone like a radiant 
vision of glory emblazoned on. the heavens, soon to fade and 
vanish from the sight. Water was dripping from the gilded 
eagle, and the tattered, shot-riddled tri-color, on which were 
embroidered the names of former victories, was stained and its 
bright hues dimmed by the smoke of many a battle-field ; the 
sole bit of brilliant color in all the faded splendor was the 
enameled cross of honor that was attached to the cravate. 

Another billow of vapor came scurrying up from the river, 
enshrouding in its fleecy depths colonel, standard, and all, 
and the battalion passed on, whitherward no one could tell. 
First their route had conducted them oyer descending ground, 


2o8 


THE DOWNFALL 


now they were climbing a hill. On reaching the summit the 
command, halt ! started at the front and ran down the column; 
the men were cautioned not to leave the ranks, arms were 
ordered, and there they remained, the heavy knapsacks form- 
ing a grievous burden to weary shoulders. It was evident 
that they were on a plateau, but to discern localities was out 
of the question ; twenty paces was the extreme range of vision. 
It was now seven o’clock ; the sound of firing reached them 
more distinctly, other batteries were apparently opening on 
Sedan from the opposite bank. 

“ Oh! I,” said Sergeant Sapin with a start, addressing Jean 
and Maurice, I shall be killed to-day.” 

It was the first time he had opened his lips that morning ; 
an expression of dreamy melancholy had rested on his thin 
face, with its big, handsome eyes and thin, pinched nose. 

“ What an idea ! ” Jean exclaimed ; “ who can tell what is 
going to happen him? Every bullet has its billet, they say, 
but you stand no worse chance than the rest of us.” 

“ Oh, but me — I am as good as dead now. I tell you I shall 
be killed to-day.” 

The near files turned and looked at him curiously, asking 
him if he had had a dream. No, he had dreamed nothing, 
but he felt it ; it was there. 

“ And it is a pity, all the same, because I was to be married 
when I got my discharge.” 

V A vague expression came into his eyes again ; his past life 
rose before him. He was the son of a small retail grocer at 
I Lyons, and had been petted and spoiled by his mother up to 
j the time of her death ; then rejecting the proffer of his father, 
\ with whom he did not hit it off well, to assist in purchasing 
his discharge, he had remained with the army, weary and dis- 
gusted with life and with his surroundings. Coming home on 
furlough, however, he fell in Ipve with a cousin and they be- 
came engaged ; their intention was to open a little shop on the 
small capital which she would bring him, and then existence 
once more became desirable. He had received an elementary 
education ; could read, write, and cipher. For the past year 
he had lived only in anticipation of this happy future. 

He shivered, and gave himself a shake to dispel his revery, 
repeating with his tranquil air : 

“ Yes, it is too bad ; I shall be killed to-day.” 

No one spoke ; the uncertainty and suspense continued. 
The^ knew not whether the enemy was on their front or in 


THE DOWNFALL 


209; 


their rear. Strange sounds came to their ears from time to- 
time from out the depths of the mysterious fog: the rumble 
of wheels, the deadened tramp of moving masses, the distant 
clatter of horses’ hoofs ; it was the evolutions of troops, hidden 
from view behind the misty curtain, the batteries, battalions, 
and squadrons of the 7th corps taking up their positions in 
line of battle. Now, however, it began to look as if the fog 
was about to lift ; it parted here and there and fragments 
floated lightly off, like strips of gauze torn from a veil, and 
bits of sky appeared, not transparently blue, as on a bright 
summer’s day, but opaque and of the hue of burnished steel, 
like the cheerless bosom of some deep, sullen mountain tarn. 
It was in one of those brighter moments when the sun was en- 
deavoring to struggle forth that the regiments of chasseurs 
d’Afrique, constituting part of Margueritte’s division, came 
riding by, giving the impression of a band of spectral horse- 
men. They sat very stiff and erect in the saddle, with their 
short cavalry jackets, broad red sashes and smart little k6pis, 
accurate in distance and alignment and managing admirably 
their lean, wiry mounts, which were almost invisible under the 
heterogeneous collection of tools and camp equipage that they 
had to carry. Squadron after squadron they swept by in long 
array, to be swallowed in the gloom from which they had just 
emerged, vanishing as if dissolved by the fine rain. The truth 
was, probably, that they were in the way, and their leaders, 
not knowing what use to put them to, had packed them off the 
field, as had often been the case since the opening of the cam- 
paign. They had scarcely ever been employed on scouting or 
reconnoitering duty, and as soon as there was prospect of a 
fight were trotted about for shelter from valley to valley, use- 
less objects, but too costly to be endangered. 

Maurice thought of Prosper as he watched them. “ That 
fellow, yonder, looks like him,” he said, under his breath. “ I 
wonder if it is he ? ” 

Of whom are you speaking ? ” asked Jean. 

Of that young man of Remilly, whose brother we met at 
Osches, you remember.” 

Behind the chasseurs, when they had all passed, came a gen- 
eral officer and his staff dashing down the descending road, 
and Maurice recognized the general of their brigade, Bour- 
gain-Desfeuilles, shouting and gesticulating wildly. He had 
torn himself reluctantly from his comfortable quarters at the 
hotel of the Golden Cross, and it was evident from the horrj- 


210 


THE DOWNFALL 


ble temper he was in that the condition of affairs that morning 
was not satisfactory to him. In a tone of voice so loud that 
everyone could hear he roared : 

“In the devil’s name, what stream is that off yonder, the 
Meuse or the Moselle ? ” 

The fog dispersed at last, this time in earnest. As at Ba- 
zeilles the effect was theatrical ; the curtain rolled slowly up- 
ward to the flies, disclosing the setting of the stage. From a 
sky of transparent blue the sun poured down a flood of bright 
golden light, and Maurice was no longer at a loss to recognize 
their position. 

“Ah ! ” he said to Jean, “we are on the plateau de I’Al- 
gerie. That village that you see across the valley, directly in 
our front, is Floing, and that more distant one is Saint-MengeSj 
and that one, more distant still, a little to the right, is Fleig- 
neux. Then those scrubby trees on the horizon, away in the 
background, are the forest of the Ardennes, and there lies the 
frontier ” 

He went on to explain their position, naming each locality 
and pointing to it with outstretched hand. The plateau de 
I’Alg^rie was a belt of reddish ground, something less than 
two miles in length, sloping gently downward frooi the wood 
of la Garenne toward the Meuse, from which it was separated 
by the meadows. On it the line of the 7th corps had been 
established by General Douay, who felt that his numbers were 
not sufficient to defend so extended a position and properly 
maintain his touch with the ist corps, which was posted at 
right angles with his line, occupying the valley of la Givonne, 
from the wood of la Garenne to Daigny. 

“ Oh, isn’t it grand, isn’t it magnificent ! ” 

And Maurice, revolving on his heel, made with his hand a 
sweeping gesture that embraced the entire horizon. From 
their position on the plateau the whole wide field of battle lay 
stretched before them to the south and west : Sedan, almost 
at their feet, whose citadel they could see overtopping the 
roofs, then Balan and Bazeilles, dimly seen through the dun 
smoke-clouds that hung heavily in the motionless air, and 
further in the distance the hills of the left bank, Liry, la Mar- 
f^e, la Croix-Piau. It was away toward the west, however, in 
the direction of Donchery, that the prospect was most exten- 
sive. There the Meuse curved horseshoe-wise, encircling the 
peninsula of Iges with a ribbon of pale silver, and at the 
northern extremity of the loop was distinctly visible the narrow 


Tttt DOWNFALL 


road of the Saint- Albert pass, winding between the river bank 
and a beetling, overhanging hill that was crowned with the 
little wood of Seugnon, an offshoot of the forest of la Fali- 
zette. At the summit of the hill, at the carrefour of la Maison- 
Roiige, the road from Donchery to Vrigne-aux-Bois debouched 
into the Mezieres pike. 

“ See, that is the road by which we might retreat on Me- 
zieres." 

Even as he spoke the first gun was fired from Saint-Menges. 
The fog still hung over the bottom-lands in shreds and patches, 
and through it they dimly descried a shadowy body of men 
moving through the Saint-Albert defile. 

“Ah, they are there,” continued Maurice, instinctively low- 
ering his voice. “Too late, too late; they have intercepted 
us ! ” 

It was not eight o’clock. The guns, which were thundering 
more fiercely than ever in the direction of Bazeilles, now also 
began to make themselves heard at the eastward, in the valley 
of la Givonne, which was hid from view ; it was the army of 
the Crown Prince of Saxony, debouching from the Chevalier 
wood and attacking the ist corps, in front of Daigny village ; 
and now that the Xlth Prussian corps, moving on Floing, had 
opened fire on General Douay’s troops, the investment was 
complete at every point of the great periphery of several 
leagues’ extent, and the action was general all along the line. 

Maurice suddenly perceived the enormity of their blunder 
in not retreating on Mezieres during the night ; but as yet the 
consequences were not clear to him ; he could not foresee all 
the disaster that was to result from that fatal error of judg- 
ment. Moved by some indefinable instinct of danger, he 
looked with apprehension on the adjacent heights that com- 
manded the plateau de I’Alg^rie. If time had not been allowed 
them to make good their retreat, why had they not backed up 
against the frontier and occupied those heights of Illy and 
Saint-Menges, whence, if they could not maintain their posi- 
tion, they would at least have been free to cross over into 
Belgium ? There were two points that appeared to him 
especially threatening, the 77ia7nelon of Hattoy, to the north of 
Floing on the left, and the Calvary of Illy, a stone cross with 
a linden tree on either side, the highest bit of ground in the 
surrounding country, to the right. General Douay was keenly 
alive to the importance of these eminences, and the day before 
had sent two battalions to occupy Hattoy ; but the men, feeling 


2X2 


THE DOWNFALL 


that they were “ in the air” and too remote from support, had 
fallen back early that morning. It was understood that the 
left wing of the ist corps was to take care of the Calvary of 
Illy. The wide expanse of naked country between Sedan and 
the Ardennes forest was intersected by deep ravines, and the 
key of the position was manifestly there, in the shadow of that 
cross and the two lindens, whence their guns might sweep the 
fields in every direction for a long distance. 

Two more cannon shots rang out, quickly succeeded by a 
salvo ; they detected the bluish smoke rising from the under- 
brush of a low hill to the left of Saint-Menges. 

“ Our turn is coming now,” said Jean. 

Nothing more startling occurred just then, however. The 
men, still preserving their formation and standing at ordered 
arms, found something to occupy their attention in the fine 
appearance made by the 2d division, posted in front of Floing, 
with their left refused and facing the Meuse, so as to guard 
against a possible attack from that quarter. The ground to 
the east, as far as the wood of la Garenne, beneath Illy vil- 
lage, was held by the 3d division, while the ist, which had lost 
heavily at Beaumont, formed a second line. All night long 
the engineers had been busy with pick and shovel, and even 
after the Prussians had opened fire they were still digging 
away at their shelter trenches and throwing up epaulments. 

Then a sharp rattle of musketry, quickly silenced,^ however, 
was heard proceeding from a point beneath Floing, and Cap- 
tain Beaudoin received orders to move his company three 
hundred yards to the rear. Their new position was in a great 
field of cabbages, upon reaching which the captain made his 
men lie down. The sun had not yet drunk up the moisture 
that had descended on the vegetables in the darkness, and 
every fold and crease of the thick, golden-green leaves was 
filled with trembling drops, as pellucid and luminous as bril- 
liants of the fairest water. 

“ Sight for four hundred yards,” the captain ordered. 

Maurice rested the barrel of his musket on a cabbage that 
reared its head conveniently before him, but it was impossible 
to see anything in his recumbent position : only the blurred sur- 
face of the fields traversed by his level glance, diversified by 
an occasional tree or shrub. Giving Jean, who was beside 
him, a nudge with his elbow, he asked what they were to do 
there. The corporal, whose experience in such matters was 
greater, pointed to an elevation not far away, where a battery 


THE DOWNFALL 


213 


Was just taking its position ; it was evident that they had been 
placed there to support that battery, should there be need of 
their services. Maurice, wondering whether Honore and his 
guns were not of the party, raised his head to look, but the 
reserve artillery was at the rear, in the shelter of a little grove 
of trees. 

JVom de Dieu.D* yelled Rochas, “will you lie down ! ” 

And Maurice had barely more than complied with this inti- 
mation when a shell passed screaming over him. From that 
time forth there seemed to be no end to them. The enemy’s 
gunners were slow in obtaining the range, their first projec- 
tiles passing over and landing well to the rear of the battery, 
which was now opening in reply. Many of their shells, too, 
fell upon the soft ground, in which they buried themselves 
without exploding, and for a time there was a great display of 
rather heavy wit at the expense of those bloody sauerkraut 
eaters. 

“ Well, well ! ” said Loubet, “ their fireworks are a fizzle ! ” 

“They ought to take them in out of the rain,” sneered 
Chouteau. 

Even Rochas thought it necessary to say something. 
“ Didn’t I tell you that the dunderheads don’t know enough 
even to point a gun ? ” 

But they were less inclined to laugh when a shell burst only 
ten yards from them and sent a shower of earth flying over 
the company ; Loubet affected to make light of it by ordering 
his comrades to get out their brushes from the knapsacks, but 
Chouteau suddenly became very pale and had not a word to 
say. He had never been under fire, nor had Pache and La- 
poulle, nor any member of the squad, in fact, except Jean. 
Over eyes that had suddenly lost their brightness lids flick- 
ered tremulously; voices had an unnatural, muffled sound, as 
if arrested by some obstruction in the throat. Maurice, who 
was sufficiently master of himself as yet, endeavored to diag- 
nose his symptoms ; he could not be afraid, for he was not 
conscious that he was in danger ; he only felt a slight sensa- 
tion of discomfort in the epigastric region, and his head 
seemed strangely light and empty ; ideas and images came and 
went independent of his will. His recollection of the brave 
show made by the troops of the 2d division made him hope- 
ful, almost to buoyancy ; victory appeared certain to him if 
only they might be allowed to go at the enemy with the 
bayonet. 


214 


THE DOWNFALL 


“ Listen ! ” he murmured, “ how the flies buzz ; the place is 
full of them.” Thrice he had heard something that sounded 
like the humming of a swarm of bees. 

“ That was not a fly,” Jean said, with a laugh. “ It was a 
bullet.” 

Again and again the hum of those invisible wings made it- 
self heard. The men craned their necks and looked about 
them with eager interest ; their curiosity was uncontrollable — 
would not allow them to remain quiet. 

“ See here,” Loubet said mysteriously to Lapoulle, with a 
view to raise a laugh at the expense of his simple-minded 
comrade, ‘‘ when you see a bullet coming toward you you must 
raise your forefinger before your nose — like that ; it divides 
the air, and the bullet will go by to the right or left.” 

“ But I can’t see them,” said Lapoulle. 

A loud guffaw burst from those near. 

“ Oh, crickey ! he says he can’t see them ! Open your gar- 
ret windows, stupid ! See ! there’s one — see ! there’s an- 
other. Didn’t you see that one ? It was of the most beauti- 
ful green.” 

And Lapoulle rolled his eyes and stared, placing his finger 
before his nose, while Pache fingfered the scapular he wore 
and wished it was large enough to shield his entire person. 

Rochas, who had remained on his feet, spoke up and said 
jocosely : 

“ Children, there is no objection to your ducking to the 
shells when you see them coming. As for the bullets, it is use- 
less ; they are too numerous ! ” 

At that very instant a soldier in the front rank was struck 
on the head by a fragment of an exploding shell. There was 
no outcry ; simply a spirt of blood and brain, and all was over. 

“ Poor devil ! ” tranquilly said Sergeant Sapin, who was 
quite cool and exceedingly pale. Next ! ” 

But the uproar had by this time become so deafening that 
the men could no longer hear one another’s voice ; Maurice’s 
nerves, in particular, suffered from the charivari. The 

neighboring battery was banging away as fast as the gunners 
could load the pieces ; the continuous roar seemed to shake 
the ground, and the mitrailleuses were even more intolerable 
with their rasping, grating, grunting noise. Were they to re- 
main forever reclining there among the cabbages ? There was 
nothing to be seen, nothing to be learned ; no one had any 
idea how the battle was going. And was it a battle, after all 


THE DOWNFALL 


215 


— a genuine affair ? All that Maurice could make out, pro- 
jecting his eyes along the level surface of the fields, was the 
rounded, wood-clad summit of Hattoy in the remote distance, 
and still unoccupied. Neither was there a Prussian to be seen 
anywhere on the horizon ; the only evidence of life were the 
faint, blue smoke-wreaths that rose and floated an instant in 
the sunlight. Chancing to turn his head, he was greatly sur- 
prised to behold at the bottom of a deep, sheltered valley, 
surrounded by precipitous heights, a peasant calmly tilling his 
little field, driving the plow through the furrow with the as- 
sistance of a big white horse. Why should he lose a day ? 
The corn would keep growing, let them fight as they would, 
and folks must live. 

Unable longer to control his impatience, the young man 
jumped to his feet. He had a fleeting vision of the batteries 
of Saint-Menges, crowned with tawny vapors and spewing 
shot and shell upon them ; he had also time to see, what he 
had seen before and had not forgotten, the road from 
Saint-Albert’s pass black with minute moving objects — the 
swarming hordes of the invader. Then Jean seized him by 
the legs and pulled him violently to his place again. 

“ Are you crazy ? Do you want to leave your bones here ? " 

And Rochas chimed in : 

“ Lie down, will you ! What am I to do with such d — d 
rascals, who get themselves killed without orders ! ” 

“But you don’t lie down, lieutenant,” said Maurice. 

“That’s a different thing. I have to know what is going 
on.” 

Captain Beaudoin, too, kept his legs like a man, but never 
Qpened his lips to say an encouraging word to his men, having 
nothing in common with them. He appeared nervous and 
unable to remain long in one place, striding up and down the 
field, impatiently awaiting orders. 

No orders came, nothing occurred to relieve their suspense. 
Maurice’s knapsack was causing him horrible suffering ; it 
seemed to be crushing his back and chest in that recumbent 
position, so painful when maintained for any length of time. 
The men had been cautioned against throwing away their 
sacks unless in case of actual necessity, and he kept turning 
over, first on his right side, then on the left, to ease him- 
self a moment of his burden by resting it on the ground. 
The shells continued to fall around them, but the German 
gunners did not succeed in getting the exact range ; no one 


2I6 


THE DOWNFALL 


was killed after the poor fellow who lay there on his stomach 
with his skull fractured. 

“ Say, is this thing to last all day?” Maurice finally asked 
Jean, in sheer desperation. 

“Like enough. At Solferino they put us in a field of car- 
rots, and there we stayed five mortal hours with our noses to 
the ground.” Then he added, like the sensible fellow he was : 
“ Why do you grumble ? we are not so badly off here. You 
will have an opportunity to distinguish yourself before the day 
is over. Let everyone have his chance, don’t you see ; if we 
should all be killed at the beginning there would be none 
left for the end.” 

“ Look,” Maurice abruptly broke in, “ look at that smoke 
over Hattoy. They have taken Hattoy ; we shall have 
plenty of music to dance to now ! ” 

For a moment his burning curiosity, which he was conscious 
was now for the first time beginning to be dashed with per- 
sonal fear, had sufficient to occupy it ; his gaze was riveted on 
the rounded summit of the mamelon^ the only elevation that 
was within his range of vision, dominating the broad expanse 
of plain that lay level with his eye. Hattoy was too far dis- 
tant to permit him to distinguish the gunners of the batteries 
that the Prussians had posted there ; he could see nothing at 
all, in fact, save the smoke that at each discharge rose above 
a thin belt of woods that served to mask the guns.. The 
enemy’s occupation of the position, of which General Douay 
had been forced to abandon the defense, was, as Maurice had 
instinctively felt, an event of the gravest importance and des- 
tined to result in the most disastrous consequences ; its pos- 
sessors would have entire command of all the surrounding 
plateau. This was quickly seen to be the case, for the batter- 
ies that opened on the second division of the 7th corps did 
fearful execution. They had now perfected their range, and 
tlie French battery,- near which Beaudoin’s company was sta- 
tioned, had two men killed in quick succession. A quarter- 
master’s man in the company had his left heel carried away 
by a splinter and began to howl most dismally, as if visited 
by a sudden attack of madness. 

“ Shut up, you great calf ! ” said Rochas. “ What do you 
mean by yelling like that for a little scratch ! ” 

The man suddenly ceased his outcries and subsided into a 
stupid silence, nursing his foot in his hand. 

,And still the tremendous artillery duel raged, and the 


THE DOWNFALL 


217 


death-dealing missiles went screaming over the recumbent 
ranks of the regiments that lay there on the sullen, sweltering 
plain, where no thing of- life was to be seen beneath the blaz- 
ing sun. The crashing thunder, the destroying hurricane, were 
masters in that solitude, and many long hours would pass be- 
fore the end. But even thus early in the day the Germans 
had demonstrated the superiority of their artillery ; their per- 
cussion shells had an enormous range, and exploded, with 
hardly an exception, on reaching their destination, while the 
French time-fuse shells, with a much shorter range, burst for 
the most part in the air and were wasted. And there was noth- 
ing left for the poor fellows exposed to that murderous fire 
s^ive to hug the ground and make themselves as small as pos- 
sible ; they were even denied the privilege of firing in reply, 
which would have kept their mind occupied and given them 
a measure of relief ; but upon whom or what were they to 
direct their rifles ? since there was not a living soul to be 
seen upon the entire horizon ! 

“ Are we never to have a shot at them ? I would give a 
dollar for just one chance ! ” said Maurice, in a frenzy of im- 
patience. “ It is disgusting to have them blazing away at us 
like this and not be allowed to answer.” 

“ Be patient ; the time will come,” Jean imperturbably re- 
plied. 

Their attention was attracted by the sound of mounted men 
approaching on their left, and turning their heads they beheld 
General Douay, who, accompanied by his staff, had come 
galloping up to see how his troops were behaving under the 
terrible fire from Hattoy. He appeared well pleased with 
what he saw and was in the act of making some suggestions 
to the officers grouped around him, when, emerging from a 
sunken road. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles also rode up. 
This officer, though he owed his advancement to “ influence ” 
was wedded to the antiquated African routine and had learned 
nothing by experience, sat his horse with great composure 
under the storm of projectiles. He was shouting to the men 
and gesticulating wildly, after the manner of Rochas : “ They 
are coming, they will be here right away, and then we’ll let 
them have the bayonet !” when he caught sight of General 
Douay and drew up to his side. 

“ Is it true that the marshal is wounded, general ? ” he 
asked. 

It is but too true, unfortunately, I received a note from 


2i8 


THE DOWNFALL 


Ducrot only a few minutes ago, in which he advises me of the 
fact, and also notifies me that, by the marshal’s appointment, 
he is in command of the army.” 

“ Ah ! so it is Ducrot who is to have his place ! And what 
are the orders now ? ” 

The general shook his head sorrowfully. He had felt that 
the army was doomed, and for the last twenty-four hours had 
been strenuously recommending the occupation of lily and 
Saint-Menges in order to keep a way of retreat open on 
Mezieres. 

“ Ducrot will carry out the plan we talked of yesterday : 
the whole army is to be concentrated on the plateau of Illy.” 

And he repeated his previous gesture, as if to say it was too 
late. 

His words were partly inaudible in the roar of the artillery, 
but Maurice caught their significance clearly enough, and it 
left him dumfounded by astonishment and alarm. What ! 
Marshal MacMahon wounded since early that morning. Gen- 
eral Ducrot commanding in his place for the last two hours, 
the entire army retreating to the northward of Sedan — and 
all these important events kept from the poor devils of sol- 
diers who were squandering their life’s blood ! and all their 
destinies, dependent on the life of a single man, were to be 
intrusted to the direction of fresh and untried hands ! He 
had a distinct consciousness of the fate that was in reserve 
for the army of Chalons, deprived of its commander, desti- 
tute of any guiding principle of action, dragged purposelessly 
in this direction and in that, while the Germans went straight 
and swift to their preconcerted end with mechanical precision 
and directness. 

Bourgain-Desfeuilles had wheeled his horse and was mov- 
ing away, when General Douay, to whom a grimy, dust-stained 
hussar had galloped up with another dispatch, excitedly sum- 
moned him back. 

“General! General!” 

His voice rang out so loud and clear, with such an accent 
of surprise, that it drowned the uproar of the guns. 

“General, Ducrot is no longer in command ; de Wimpffen 
is chief. You know he reached here yesterday, just in the 
very thick of the disaster at Beaumont, to relieve de Failly at 
the head of the 5th corps — and he writes me that he has 
written instructions from the Minister of War assigning him 
to the command of the army in case the post should become 


THE DOWNFALL 


219 


vacant. And there is to be no more retreating ; the orders 
now are to reoccupy our old positions, and defend them to the 
last.” 

General Bourgain-Desfeuilles drank in the tidings, his eyes 
bulging with astonishment. “ Norn de Dieu ! ” he at last suc- 
ceeded in ejaculating, “one would like to know But it 

is no business of mine, anyhow.” And off he galloped, not 
allowing himself to be greatly agitated by this unexpected 
turn of affairs, for he had gone into the war solely in the hope 
of seeing his name raised a grade higher in the army list, and 
it was his great desire to behold the end of the beastly cam- 
paign as soon as possible, since it was productive of so little 
satisfaction to anyone. 

Then there was an explosion of derision and contempt 
among the men of Beaudoin’s company. Maurice said noth- 
ing, but he shared the opinion of Chouteau and Loubet, who 
chaffed and blackguarded everyone without mercy. “ See-saw, 
up and down, move as I pull the string ! A fine gang they 
were, those generals ! they understood one another ; they were 
not going pull all the blankets off the bed ! What was a poor 
devil of a soldier to do when he had such leaders put over 
him ? Three commanders in two hours’ time, three great 
numskulls, none of whom knew what was the right thing to 
do, and all of them giving different orders ! Demoralized, 
were they ? Good Heavens, it was enough to demoralize God 
Almighty himself, and all His angels ! ” And the inevitable 
accusation of treason was again made to do duty ; Ducrot 
and de Wimpffen wanted to get three millions apiece out of 
Bismarck, as MacMahon had done. 

Alone in advance of his staff General Douay sat on his horse 
a long time, his gaze bent on the distant positions of the enemy 
and in his eyes an expression of infinite melancholy. He made 
a minute and protracted observation of Hattoy, the shells from 
which came tumbling almost at his very feet; then, giving a 
glance at the plateau of Illy, called up an officer to carry an 
order to the brigade of the 5th corps that he had borrowed 
the-day previous from General de Wimpffen, and which served 
to connect his right with the left of General Ducrot. He was 
distinctly heard to say these words : 

“ If the Prussians should once get possession of the Calvary 
it would be impossible for us to hold this position an hour ; 
we should be driven into Sedan.” 

He rode off and was lost to view, together with his escort, at 


220 


THE DOWNFALL 


the entrance of the sunken road, and the German fire became 
hotter than before. They had doubtless observed the pres- 
ence of the group of mounted officers ; but now the shells, 
which hitherto had come from the front, began to fall upon 
them laterally, from the left ; the batteries at Frenois, together 
with one which the enemy had carried across the river and 
posted on the peninsula of Iges, had established, in connection 
with the guns on Hattoy, an enfilading fire which swept the 
plateau de I’Algerie in its entire length and breadth. The 
position of the company now became most lamentable ; the 
men, with death in front of them and on their flank, knew not 
which way to turn or which of the menacing perils to guard 
themselves against. In rapid succession three men were killed 
outright and two severely wounded. 

It was then that Sergeant Sapin met the death that he had 
predicted for himself. He had turned his head, and caught 
sight of the approaching missile when it was too late for him 
to avoid it. 

“ Ah, here it is ! ” was all he said. 

There was no terror in the thin face, with its big handsome 
eyes ; it was only pale; very pale and inexpressibly mournful. 
The wound was in the abdomen. 

“ Oh ! do not leave me here,” he pleaded ; “ take me to the 
ambulance, I beseech you. Take me to the rear.” 

Rochas endeavored to silence him, and it was on his brutal 
lips to say that it was useless to imperil two comrades’ lives 
for one whose wound was so evidently mortal, when his better 
nature made its influence felt and he murmured : 

“Be patient for a little, my poor boy, and the litter-bearers 
will come and get you.” 

But the wretched man, whose tears were now flowing, kept 
crying, as one distraught that his dream of happiness was van- 
ishing with his trickling life-blood : 

“ Take me away, take me away ” 

Finally Captain Beaudoin, whose already unstrung nerves 
were further irritated by his pitiful cries, called for two volun- 
teers to carry him to a little piece of woods a short way off 
where a flying ambulance had been established. Chouteau 
and Loubet jumped to their feet simultaneously, anticipating 
the others, seized the sergeant, one of them by the shoulders, 
the other by the legs, and bore him away on a run. They had 
gone but a little way, however, when they felt the body becom- 
ing rigid in the final convulsion ; he wasMying. 


THE DO WNFALL 2 2 1 

I say, he’s dead,” exclaimed Loubet. “ Let’s leave him 
here.” 

But Chouteau, without relaxing his speed, angrily replied : 

“ Go ahead, you booby, will you ! Do you take me for a 
fool, to leave him here and have them call us back ! ” 

Lhey pursued their course with the corpse until they came 
to the little wood, threw it down at the foot of a tree, and went 
their way. That was the last that was seen of them until 
nightfall. 

'The battery beside them had been strengthened by three 
additional guns ; the cannonade on either side went on with in- 
creased fury, and in the hideous uproar terror — a wild, unreason- 
ing terror — filled Maurice’s soul. It was his first experience of 
the sensation; he had not until now felt that cold sweat trickling 
down his back, that terrible sinking at the pit of the stomach, 
that unconquerable desire to get on his feet and run, yelling 
and screaming, from the field. It was nothing more than the 
strain from which his nervous, high-strung temperament was 
suffering from reflex action ; but Jean, who was observing him 
narrowly, detected the incipient crisis in the wandering, vacant 
eyes, and seizing him with his strong hand, held him down 
firmly at his side. The corporal lectured him paternally in a 
whisper, not mincing his words, but employing good, vigorous 
language to restore him to a sense of self-respect, for he knew 
by experience that a man in panic is not to be coaxed out of 
his cowardice. There were others also who were showing the 
white feather, among them Pache, who was whimpering invol- 
untarily, in the low, soft voice of a little baby, his eyes suffused 
with tears. Lapoulle’s stomach betrayed him and he was very 
ill ; and there were many others who also found relief in vomit- 
ing, amid their comrade’s loud jeers and laughter, which helped 
to restore their courage to them all. 

“ My God ! ” ejaculated Maurice, ghastly pale, his teeth 
chattering. “ My God ! ” 

Jean shook him roughly. “You infernal coward, are )^ou 
going to be sick like those fellows over yonder? Behave 
yourself, or I’ll box your ears.” 

Pie was trying to put heart into his friend by gruff but 
friendly speeches like the above, when they suddenly beheld a 
dozen dark forms emerging from a little wood upon their front 
and about four hundred yards away. Their spiked helmets 
announced them to be Prussians ; the first Prussians they had 
had within reach of their rifles since the opening of the cam- 


THE downfall 


222 

paign. This first squad was succeeded by others, and In 
front of their position the little dust clouds that rose where 
the French shells struck were distinctly visible. It was all 
very vivid and clear-cut in the transparent air of morning ; 
the Germans, outlined against the dark forest, presented the 
toy-like appearance of those miniature soldiers of lead that 
are the delight of children ; then, as the enemy’s shells began 
to drop in their vicinity with uncomfortable frequency, they 
withdrew and were lost to sight within the wood whence they 
had come. 

But Beaudoin’s company had seen them there once, and to 
their eyes they were there still ; the chassepots seemed to go 
off of their own accord. Maurice was the first man to dis- 
charge his piece ; Jean, Pache, Lapoulle and the others ail 
followed suit. There had been no order given to commence 
firing, and the captain made an attempt to check it, but de- 
sisted upon Rochas’s representation that it was absolutely nec- 
essary as a measure of relief for the men’s pent-up feelings. 
So, then, they were at liberty to shoot at last, they could use 
up those cartridges that they had been lugging around with 
them for the last month, without ever burning a single one ! 
The effect on Maurice in particular was electrical ; the noise 
he made had the effect of dispelling his fear and blunting the 
keenness of his sensations. The little wood had resumed its 
former deserted aspect ; not a leaf stirred, no more Prussians 
showed themselves ; and still they kept on blazing away as 
madly as ever at the immovable trees. 

Raising his eyes presently Maurice was startled to see Col- 
onel de Vineuil sitting his big horse at no great distance, man 
and steed impassive and motionless as if carved from stone ; 
patient were they under the leaden hail, with face turned 
toward the enemy. The entire regiment was now collected in 
that vicinity, the other companies being posted in the adjacent 
fields ; the musketry fire seemed to hfe drawing nearer. The 
young man also beheld the regimental colors a little to the 
rear, borne aloft by the sturdy arm of the standard-bearer, 
but it was no longer the phantom flag that he had seen that 
morning, shrouded in mist and fog ; the golden eagle flashed 
and blazed in the fierce sunlight, and the tri-colored silk, de- 
spite the rents and stains of many a battle, flaunted its bright 
hues defiantly to the breeze. Waving in the breath of the 
cannon, floating proudly against the blue of heaven, it shone 
like an emblem of victory. 


THE DOWNFALL 


223 


And why, now that the day of battle had arrived, should 
not victory perch upon that banner ? With that reflection 
Maurice and his companions kept on industriously wasting 
their powder on the distant wood, producing havoc there 
among the leaves and twigs. 


III. 

S LEEP did not visit Henriette’s eyes that night. She knew 
her husband to be a prudent man, but the thought that 
he was in Bazeilles, so near the German lines, was cause to 
her of deep anxiety. She tried to soothe her apprehensions by 
reminding herself that she had his solemn promise to return 
at the first appearance of danger ; it availed not, and at every 
instant she detected herself listening to catch the sound of his 
footstep on the stair. At ten o’clock, as she was about to go 
to bed, she opened her window, and resting her elbows on the 
sill, gazed out into the night. 

The darkness was intense ; looking downward, she could 
scarce discern the pavement of the Rue des Voyards, a nar- 
row, obscure passage, overhung by old frowning mansions. 
Further on, in the direction of the college, a smoky street lamp 
burned dimly. A nitrous exhalation rose from the street ; the 
squall of a vagrant cat ; the heavy step of a belated soldier. 
From the city at her back came strange and alarming sounds : 
the patter of hurrying feet, an ominous, incessant rumbling, 
a muffled murmur without a name that chilled her blood. 
Her heart beat loudly in her bosom as she bent her ear to 
listen, and still she heard not the familiar echo of her hus- 
band’s step at the turning of the street below. 

Hours passed, and now distant lights that began to twinkle in 
the open fields beyond the ramparts excited afresh her appre- 
hensions. It was so dark that it cost her an effort of memory 
to recall localities. She knew that the broad expanse that lay 
beneath her, reflecting a dim light, was the flooded meadows, 
and that flame that blazed up and was suddenly extinguished, 
surely it must be on la Marfee. But never, to her certain knowl- 
edge, had there been farmer’s house or peasant’s cottage on 
those heights ; what, then, was the meaning of that light ? 
And then on every hand, at Pont-Maugis, Noyers, Frenois, 
other fires arose, coruscating fitfully for an instant and giving 
mysterious indication of the presence of the swarming host 
that lay hidden in the bosom of the night. Yet more : there 


224 


THE DOWNFALL 


were strange sounds and voices in the air, subdued murmur- 
ings such as she had never heard before, and that made her 
start in terror ; the stifled hum of marching men, the neighing 
and snorting of steeds, the clash of arms, hoarse words of 
command, given in guttural accents ; an evil dream of a demo- 
niac crew, a witch’s sabbat, in the depths of those unholy 
shades. Suddenly a single cannon-shot rang out, ear-rend- 
ing, adding fresh terror to the dead silence that succeeded 
it. It froze her very marrow ; what could it mean ? A sig- 
nal, doubtless, telling of the successful completion of some 
movement, announcing that everything was ready, down there, 
and that now the sun might rise. 

It was about two o’clock when Henriette, forgetting even 
to close her window, at last threw herself, fully dressed, upon 
her bed. Her anxiety and fatigue had stupefied her and be- 
numbed her faculties. What could ail her, thus to shiver and 
burn alternately, she who was always so calm and self-reliant, 
moving with so light a step that those about her were uncon- 
scious of her existence ? Finally she sank into a fitful, broken 
slumber that brought with it no repose, in which was present 
still that persistent sensation of impending evil that filled the 
dusky heavens. All at once, arousing her from her unrefresh- 
ing stupor, the firing commenced again, faint and muffled in 
the distance, not a single shot this time, but peal after peal 
following one another in quick succession. Trembling, she 
sat upright in bed. The firing continued. Where was she ? 
The place seemed strange to her ; she could not distinguish 
the objects in her chamber, which appeared to be filled with 
dense clouds of smoke. Then she remembered : the fog must 
have rolled in from the near-by river and entered the room 
through the window. Without, the distant firing was growing 
fiercer. She leaped from her bed and ran to the casement to 
listen. 

Four o’clock was striking from a steeple in Sedan, and day 
was breaking, tinging the purplish mists with a sickly, sinister 
light. It was impossible to discern objects ; even the college 
buildings, distant but a few yards, were undistinguishable. 
Where could the firing be, mon Dieu ! Her first thought was 
for her brother Maurice, for the reports were so indistinct that 
they seemed to her to come from the north, above the city ; 
then, listening more attentively, her doubt became certainty ; 
the cannonading was there, before her, and she trembled for 
her husband. It was surely at Ba^eilles. For a little time, 


THE DOWNFALL 


225 


however, she suffered herself to be cheered by a ray of hope, for 
there were moments when the reports seemed to come from the 
right. Perhaps the fighting was at Donchery, where she knew 
that the French had not succeeded in blowing up the bridge. 
Then she lapsed into a condition of most horrible uncertainty; 
it seemed to be now at Donchery, now at Bazeilles ; which, it 
was impossible to decide, there was such a ringing, buzzing 
sensation in her head. At last the feeling of suspense became 
so acute that she felt she could not endure it longer ; she 
must know ; every nerve in her body was quivering with the 
ungovernable desire, so she threw a shawl over her shoulders 
and left the house in quest of news. 

When she had descended and was in the street Flenriette 
hesitated a brief moment, for the little light that was in the 
east had not yet crept downward along the weather-blackened 
house-fronts to the roadway, and in the old city, shrouded in 
opaque fog, the darkness still reigned impenetrable. In the 
tap-room of a low pot-house in the Rue au Beurre, dimly 
lighted by a tallow candle, she saw two drunken Turcos and a 
woman. It was not until she turned into the Rue Maqua that 
she encountered any signs of life : soldiers slinking furtively 
along the sidewalk and hugging the walls, deserters probably, 
on the lookout fora place in which to hide ; a stalwart trooper 
with despatches, searching for his captain and knocking 
thunderously at every door ; a group of fat burghers, trembling 
with fear lest they had tarried there too long, and preparing 
to crowd themselves into one small carriole if so be they 
.might yet reach Bouillon, in Belgium, whither half the popu- 
lation of Sedan had emigrated within the last two days. She 
instinctively turned her steps toward the Sous-Prefecture, 
where she might depend on receiving information, and her 
desire to avoid meeting acquaintances determined her to take 
a short cut through lanes and by-ways. On reaching the Rue 
du Four and the Rue des Laboureurs, however, she found an 
obstacle in her way ; the place had been pre-empted by the 
ordnance department, and guns, caissons, forges were there in 
interminable array, having apparently been parked away in 
that remote corner the day before and then forgotten there. 
There was not so much as a sentry to guard them. It sent a 
chill to her heart to see all that artillery lying there silent and 
ineffective, sleeping its neglected sleep in the concealment of 
those deserted alleys. She was compelled to retrace her steps, 
therefore, which she did by passing through the Place du Col- 


226 


THE DOWNFALL 


lege to the Grande-Rue, where in front of the Hotel de I’Eu- 
rope she saw a group of orderlies holding the chargers of 
some general officers, whose high-pitched voices were audible 
from the brilliantly lighted dining-room. On the Place du 
Rivage and the Place Turenne the crowd was even greater 
still, composed of anxious groups of citizens, with women and 
children interspersed among the struggling, terror-stricken 
throng, hurrying in every direction ; and there she saw a gen- 
eral emerge from the Hotel of the Golden Cross, swearing like 
a pirate, and spur his horse off up the street at a mad gallop, 
careless whom he might overturn. For a moment she seemed 
about to enter the Hotel de Ville, then changed her mind, and 
taking the Rue du Pont-de-Meuse, pushed on to the Sous- 
Prefecture. 

Never had Sedan appeared to her in a light so tragically 
sinister as now, when she beheld it in the livid, forbidding light 
of early dawn, enveloped in its shroud of fog. The houses 
were lifeless and silent as tombs ; many of them had been 
empty and abandoned for the last two days, others the terri- 
fied owners had closely locked and barred. Shuddering, the 
city awoke to the cares and occupations of the new day ; the 
morning was fraught with chill misery in those streets, still 
half deserted, peopled only by a few frightened pedestrians 
and those hurrying fugitives, the remnant of the exodus of pre- 
vious days. Soon the sun would rise and send down its cheer- 
ful light upon the scene ; soon the city, overwhelmed in the 
swift-rising tide of disaster, would be crowded as it had never 
been before. It was half-past five o’clock ; the roar of the 
cannon, caught and deadened among the tall dingy houses, 
sounded more faintly in her ears. 

At the Sous-Prefecture Henriette had some acquaintance 
with the concierge s daughter, Rose by name, a pretty little 
blonde of refined appearance who was employed in Delaherche’s 
factory. She made her way at once to the lodge ; the mother 
was not there, but Rose received her with her usual ami- 
ability. 

“ Oh ! dear lady, we are so tired we can scarcely stand ; 
mamma has gone to lie down and rest a while. Just think ! 
all night long people have been coming and going, and we 
have not been able to get a wink of sleep.” 

And burning to tell all the wonderful sights that she had 
been witness to since the preceding day, she did not wait to 
be questioned, but ran on volubly with her narrative. 


THE DOWNFALL 


227 


“ As for the marshal, he slept very well, but that poor 
Emperor ! you can’t think what suffering he has to endure ! 
Yesterday evening, do you know, I had gone upstairs to help 
give out the linen, and as I entered the apartment that adjoins 
his dressing-room I heard groans, oh, groans !• just like 
someone dying. I thought a moment and knew it must be 
the Emperor, and 1 was so frightened I couldn’t move ; I just 
stood and trembled. It seems he has some terrible complaint 
that makes him cry out that way. When there are people 
around he holds in, but as soon as he is alone it is too much 
for him, and he groans and shrieks in a way to make your 
hair stand on end.” 

“ Do you know where the fighting is this morning ?” asked 
Henriette, desiring to check her loquacity. 

Rose dismissed the question with a wave of her little hand 
and went on with her narrative. 

“ That made me curious to know more, you see, and I went 
upstairs four or five times during the night and listened, and 
every time it was just the same ; I don’t believe he was quiet 
an instant all night long, or got a minute’s sleep. Oh ! what 
a terrible thing it is to suffer like that with all he has to worry 
him ! for everything is upside down ; it is all a most dreadful 
mess. Upon my word, I believe those generals are out of 
their senses ; such ghostly faces and frightened eyes ! And 
people coming all the time, and doors banging, and some men 
scolding and others crying, and the whole place like a sailor’s 
boarding-house ; officers drinking from bottles and going to 
bed in their boots ! The Emperor is the best of the whole lot, 
and the one who gives least trouble, in the corner where he 
conceals himself and his suffering ! ” Then, in reply to Hen- 
riette’s reiterated question: “The fighting? there 4ias been 
fighting at Bazeilles this morning. A mounted officer brought 
word of it to the marshal, who went immediately to notify the 
Emperor. The marshal has been gone ten minutes, and I 
shouldn’t wonder if the Emperor intends to follow him, for 
they are dressing him upstairs. I just now saw them comb- 
ing him and plastering his face with all sorts of cosmetics.” 

But Henriette, having finally learned what she desired to 
know, rose to go. 

“ Thank you. Rose. I am in somewhat of a hurry this 
morning.” 

The 3 ^oung girl went with her to the street door, and took 
leave of her with a courteous : 


228 


THE DOWNFALL 


Glad to have been of service to you, Madame Weiss. 1 
know that anything said to you will go no further.” 

Henriette hurried back to her house in the Rue des Voyards. 
She felt quite certain that her husband would have returned, 
and even reflected that he would be alarmed at not finding her 
there, and hastened her steps in consequence. As she drew 
near the house she raised her eyes in the expectation of seeing 
him at the window watching for her, but the window, wide 
open as she had left it when she went out, was vacant, and 
when she had run up the stairs and given a rapid glance 
through her three rooms, it was with a sinking heart that she 
saw they were untenanted save for the chill fog and continu- 
ous roar of the cannonade. The distant firing was still going 
on. She went and stood for a moment at the window ; al- 
though the encircling wall of vapor was not less dense than it 
had been before, she seemed to have a clearer apprehension, 
now that she had received oral information, of the details of 
the conflict raging at Bazeilles, the grinding sound of the 
mitrailleuses, the crashing volleys of the French batteries an- 
swering the German batteries in the distance. The reports 
seemed to be drawing nearer to the city, the battle to be wax- 
ing fiercer and fiercer with every moment. 

Why did not Weiss return ? He had pledged himself so 
faithfully not to outstay the first attack ! And Henriette be- 
gan to be seriously alarmed, depicting to herself the various 
obstacles that might have detained him : perhaps he had not 
been able to leave the village, perhaps the roads were blocked 
or rendered impassable by the projectiles. It might even be 
that something had happened him, but she put the thought 
aside and would not dwell on it, preferring to view things on 
their bri^ter side and finding in hope her safest mainstay and 
reliance. For an instant she harbored the design of starting 
out and trying to find her husband, but there were considera- 
tions that seemed to render that course inadvisable : suppos- 
ing him to have started on his return, what would become of 
her should she miss him on the way ? and what would be his 
anxiety should he come in and find her absent ? Her guiding 
principle in all her thoughts and actions was her gentle, affec- 
tionate devoted ness, and she saw nothing strange or out of 
the way in a visit to Bazeilles under such extraordinary circum- 
stances, accustomed as she was, like an affectionate little 
woman, to perform her duty in silence and do the thing that 
she deemed best for their common interest. Where her 


THE DOWHEALL 229 

husband was, there was her place ; that was all there was 
about It. 

She gave a sudden start and left the window, saying : 

“ Monsieur Delaherche, how could I forget ” 

It had just come to her recollection that the cloth manufac- 
turer had also passed the night at Bazeilles, and if he had re- 
turned would be able to give her the intelligence she wanted. 
She ran swiftly down the stairs again. In place of taking the 
more roundabout way by the Rue des Voyards, she crossed 
the little courtyard of her house and entered the passage that 
conducted to the huge structure that fronted on the Rue 
Maqua. As she came out into the great central garden, paved 
with flagstones now and retaining of its pristine glories only 
a few venerable trees, magnificent century-old elms, she was 
astonished to see a sentry mounting guard at the door of a 
carriage-house ; then it occurred to her that she had been told 
the day before that the camp chests of the 7th corps had been 
deposited there for safe keeping, and it produced a strange 
impression on her mind that all the gold, millions, it was said 
to amount to, should be lying in that shed while the men for 
whom it was destined were being killed not far away. As she 
was about to ascend the private staircase, however, that con- 
ducted to the apartment of Gilberte, young Madame Dela- 
herche, she experienced another surprise in an encounter that 
startled her so that she retraced her steps a little way, doubt- 
ful whether it would not be better to abandon her intention 
and go home again. An officer, a captain, had crossed her 
path, as noiselessly as a phantom and vanishing as swiftly, and 
yet she had had time to recognize him, having seen him in the 
past at Gilberte’s house in Charleville, in the days when she 
was still Madame Maginot. She stepped back a few steps in 
the courtyard and raised her eyes to the two tall windows of 
the bedroom, the blinds of which were closed, then dismissed 
her scruples and entered. 

Upon reaching the first floor, availing herself of that privi- 
lege of old acquaintanceship by virtue of which one woman 
often drops in upon another for an unceremonious early morn- 
ing chat, she was about to knock at the door of the dressing- 
room, but apparently someone had left the room hastily and 
failed to secure the door, so that it was standing ajar, and all 
she had to do was give it a push to find herself in the dressing- 
room, whence she passed into the bedroom. From the lofty 
ceiling of the latter apartment depended voluminous curtains 


230 


THE DOWNFALL 


of red velvet, protecting the large double bed. The warm, 
moist air was fragrant with a faint perfume of Persian lilac, 
and there was no sound to break the silence save a gentle, 
regular respiration, scarcely audible. 

“ Gilberte ! ” said Henriette, very softly. 

The young woman was sleeping peacefully, and the dim 
light that entered the room between the red curtains of the 
high windows displayed her exquisitely rounded head resting 
upon a naked arm and her profusion of beautiful hair straying 
in disorder over the pillow. Her lips were parted in a 
smile. 

“ Gilberte ! ” 

She slightly moved and stretched her arms, without opening 
her eyes. 

“ Yes, yes ; good-by. Oh ! please — ” Then, raising her 
head and recognizing Henriette : “ What, is it you ! How 
late is it ? ” 

When she learned that it had not yet struck six she seemed 
disconcerted, assuming a sportive air to hide her embarrass- 
ment, saying it was unfair to come waking people up at such 
an hour. Then, to 'her friend, questioning her about her hus- 
band, she made answer : 

“ Why, he has not returned ; I don’t look for him much be- 
fore nine o’clock. What makes you so eager to see him at 
this hour of the morning ? ” 

Henriette’s voice had a trace of sternness in it as she an- 
swered, seeing the other so smiling, so dull of comprehension 
in her happy waking. 

“ I tell you there has been fighting all the morning at Bazeilles, 
and I am anxious about my husband.” 

“ Oh, my dear,” exclaimed Gilberte, “ I assure you there is 
not the slightest reason for your feeling so. My husband is so 
prudent that he would have been home long ago had there 
been any danger. Until you see him back here you may rest 
easy, take my word for it.” 

Henriette was struck by the justness of the argument ; 
Delaherche, it was true, was distinctly not a man to expose 
himself uselessly. She was reassured, and went and drew the 
curtains and threw back the blinds ; the tawny light from 
without, where the sun was beginning to pierce the fog with 
his golden javelins, streamed in a bright flood into the apart- 
ment. One of the windows was part way open, and in the 
soft air of the spacious bedroom, but now so close and stuffy. 


THE DOWNFALL 


231 


the two women could hear the sound of the guns. Gilberte, 
half recumbent, her elbow resting on the pillow, gazed out 
upon the sky with her lustrous, vacant eyes. 

“ So, then, they are fighting,” she murmured. Her chemise 
had slipped downward, exposing a rosy, rounded shoulder, 
half hidden beneath the wandering raven tresses, and her per- 
son exhaled a subtle, penetrating odor, the odor of love. 
“ They are fighting, so early in the morning, ///<?// Dieu ! It 
would be ridiculous if it were not for the horror of it.” 

But Henriette, in looking about the room, had caught sight 
of a pair of gauntlets, the gloves of a man, lying forgotten on 
a small table, and she started perceptibly. Gilberte blushed 
deeply, and extending her arms with a conscious, caressing 
movement, drew her friend to her and rested her head upon 
her bosom 

“Yes,” she almost whispered, “ I saw that you noticed it. 
Darling, you must not judge me too severely. He is an old 
friend ; 1 told you all about it at Charleville, long ago, you re- 
member.” Her voice sank lower still ; there was something 
that sounded very like a laugh of satisfaction in her tender 
tones. “ He pleaded so with me yesterday that I would see 
him just once more. Just think, this morning he is in action ; 
he may be dead by this. How could I refuse him?” It was 
all so heroic and so charming, the contrast was so delicious 
between war’s stern reality and tender sentiment ; thoughtless 
as a linnet, she smiled again, notwithstanding her confusion. 
Never could she have found it in her heart to drive him from 
her door, when circumstances all vvere propitious for the in- 
terview. “ Do you condemn me ? ” 

Henriette had listened to her confidences with a very grave 
face. Such things surprised her, for she could not under- 
stand them ; it must be that she was constituted differently 
from other women. Her heart that morning was with her 
husband, her brother, down there where the battle was rag- 
ing. How was it possible that anyone could sleep so peace- 
fully and be so gay and cheerful when the loved ones were in 
peril ? 

“ But think of your husband, my dear, and of that poor 
young man as well. Does not your heart yearn to be with 
them ? You do not reflect that their lifeless forms may be 
brought in and laid before your eyes at any moment.” 

Gilberte raised her adorable bare arm before her face to 
shield her vision from the frightful picture. 


232 


THE DOWNFALL 


“ O Heaven ! what is that you say ? It is cruel of you to 
destroy all the pleasure of my morning in this way. No, no ; 
I won’t think of such things. They are too mournful.” 

Henriette could not refrain from smiling in spite of her anx- 
iety. She was thinking of the days of their girlhood, and how 
Gilberte’s father, Captain de Vineuil, an old naval officer who had 
been made collector of customs at Chaiieville when his wounds 
had incapacitated him for active service, hearing his daughter 
cough and fearing for her the fate of his young wife, who had 
been snatched from his arms by that terrible disease, consump- 
tion, had sent her to live at a farm-house near Chene Populeux. 
The little maid was not nine years old, and already she was a 
consummate actress — a perfect type of the village coquette, 
queening it over her playmates, tricked out in what old finery 
she could lay hands on, adorning herself with bracelets and 
tiaras made from the silver paper wrappings of the chocolate. 
She had not changed a bit when, later, at the age of twenty, 
she married Maginot, the inspector of woods and forests. 
Mezieres, a dark, gloomy town, surrounded by ramparts, was 
not to her taste, and she continued to live at Charleville, where 
the gay, generous life, enlivened by many festivities, suited her 
better. Her father was dead, and with a husband whom, by 
reason of his inferior social position, her friends and acquaint- 
ances treated with scant courtesy, she was absolutely mistress 
of her own actions. She did not escape the censure of the 
stern moralists who inhabit our provincial cities, and in those 
days was credited with many lovers ; but of the gay throng of 
officers who, thanks to her father’s old connection and her 
kinship to Colonel de Vineuil, disported themselves in her 
drawing-room. Captain Beaudoin was the only one who had 
really produced an impression. She was light and frivolou.s — 
nothing more — adoring pleasure and living entirely in the 
present, without the least trace of perverse inclination ; and 
if she accepted the captain’s attentions, it is pretty certain 
that she did it out of good-nature and love of admiration. 

“ You did very wrong to see him again,” Henriette finally 
said, in her matter-of-fact way. 

“ Oh ! my dear, since I could not possibly do otherwise, 
and it was only for just that once. You know very well I 
would die rather than deceive my new husband.” 

She spoke with much feeling, and seemed distressed to see 
her friend shake her head disapprovingly. They dropped the 
subject, and clasped each other in an affectionate embrace, 


THE DOWNFALL 


233 


notwithstanding their diametrically different natures. Each 
eould hear the beating of the other s heart, and they might 
have understood the tongues those organs spoke — one, the 
slave of pleasure, wasting and squandering all that was best 
in herself ; the other, with the mute heroism of a lofty soul, 
devoting herself to a single ennobling affection. 

“ But hark ! how the cannon are roaring,” Gilberte pres- 
ently exclaimed. “ 1 must make haste and dress.” 

The reports sounded more distinctly in the silent room now 
that their conversation had ceased. Leaving her bed, the 
young woman accepted the assistance of her friend, not caring 
to summon her maid, and rapidly made her toilet for the day, 
in order that she might be ready to go downstairs should she 
be needed there. As she was completing the arrangement of 
her hair there was a knock at the door, and, recognizing the voice 
of the elder Madame Delaherche, she hastened to ^dmit her. 

Certainly, dear mother, you may come in.” 

With the thoughtlessness that was part of her nature, she 
allowed the old lady to enter without having first removed the 
gauntlets from the table. It was in vain that Henriette darted 
forward to seize them and throw them behind a chair. 
Madame Delaherche stood glaring for some seconds at the 
spot where they had been with an expression on her face as 
if she were slowly suffocating. Then her glance wandered in- 
voluntarily from object to object in the room, stopping finally 
at the great red-curtained bed, the coverings thrown back in 
disorder. 

“ I see that Madame Weiss has disturbed your slumbers. 
Then you were able to sleep, daughter ? ” 

It was plain that she had had another purpose in coming 
there than to make that speech. Ah, that marriage that her 
son had insisted on contracting, contrary to her wish, at the 
mature age of fifty, after twenty years of joyless married life 
with a shrewish, bony wife ; he, who had always until then de- 
ferred so to her will, now swayed only by his passion for this 
gay young widow, lighter than thistle-down ! She had prom- 
ised herself to keep watch over the present, and there was the 
past coming back to plague her. But ought she to speak ? 
Her life in the household was one of silent reproach and 
protest ; she kept herself almo.st constantly imprisoned in her 
chamber, devoting herself rigidly to the observances of her 
austere religion. Now, however, the wrong was so flagrant 
that she resolved to speak to her son. 


234 


THE DOWNFALL 


Gilberte blushingly replied, without an excessive manifesta- 
tion of embarrassment, however : 

“ Oh, yes, I had a few hours of refreshing sleep. You know 

that Jules has not returned ” 

Madame Delaherche interrupted her with a grave nod of 
her head. Ever since the artillery had commenced to roar 
she had been watching eagerly for her son’s return, but she 
was a Spartan mother, and concealed her gnawing anxiety 
under a cloak of brave silence. And then she remembered 
what was the object of her visit there. 

“ Your uncle, the colonel, has sent the regimental surgeon 
with a note in pencil, to ask if we will allow them to establish 
a hospital here. He knows that we have abundance of space 
in the factory, and I have already authorized the gentlemen to 
make use of the courtyard and the big drying-room. But you 

should go down in person ” 

“ Oh, at once, at once ! ” exclaimed Henriette, hastening 
toward the door. “ We will do what we can to help.” 

Gilberte also displayed much enthusiasm for her new occu- 
pation as nurse ; she barely took the time to throw a lace scarf 
over her head, and the three women went downstairs. When 
they reached the bottom and stood in the spacious vestibule, 
looking out through the main entrance, of which the leaves 
had been thrown wide back, they beheld a crowd collected in 
the street before the house. A low-hung carriage was advanc- 
ing slowly along the roadway, a sort of carriole, drawn by a 
single horse, which a lieutenant of zouaves was leading by the 
bridle. They took it to be a wounded man that they were 
bringing to them, the first of their patients. 

“ Yes, yes ! This is the place ; this way ! ” 

But they were quickly undeceived. The sufferer recumbent 
in the carriole was Marshal MacMahon, severely wounded in 
the hip, who, his hurt having been provisionally cared for in 
the cottage of a gardener, was now being taken to the Sous- 
Prefecture. He was bareheaded and partially divested of his 
clothing, and the gold embroidery on his uniform was tarnished 
with dust and blood. He spoke no word, but had raised his 
head from the pillow where it lay and was looking about him 
with a sorrowful expression, and perceiving the three women 
where they stood, wide eyed with horror, their joined hands 
resting on their bosom, in presence of that great calamity, 
the whole army stricken in the person of its chief at the very 
beginning of the conflict, he slightly bowed his head, with a 


THE DOWNFALL 


235 


faint, paternal sinile. A few of those about him removed their 
hats ; others, who had no time for such idle ceremony, were 
circulating the report of General Ducrot’s appointment to 
the command of the army. It was half-past seven o’clock. 

“ And what of the Emperor ?” Henriette inquired of a book- 
seller, who was standing at his door. 

“ He left the city near an hour ago,” replied the neighbor. 
“ I was standing by and saw him pass out at the Balau gate. 
There is a rumor that his head was taken off by a cannon 
ball.” 

But this made the grocer across the street furious. “ Hold 
your tongue,” he shouted, “ it is an infernal lie ! None but 
the brave will leave their bones there to-day ! ” 

When near the Place du College the marshal’s carriole was 
lost to sight in the gathering crowd, among whose numbers 
the most strange and contradictory reports from the field of 
battle were now beginning to circulate. The fog was clearing ; 
the streets were bright with sunshine. 

A hail, in no gentle terms, was heard proceeding from the 
courtyard : “ Now then, ladies, here is where you are wanted, 
not outside ! ” 

They all three hastened inside and found themselves in 
presence of Major Bouroche, who had thrown his uniform 
coat upon the floor, in a corner of the room, and donned a 
great white apron. Above the broad expanse of, as yet, un- 
spotted white, his blazing, leonine eyes and enormous head, 
with shock of harsh, bristling hair, seemed to exhale energy 
and determination. So terrible did he appear to them that 
the women were his most humble servants from the very start, 
obedient to his every sign, treading on one another to antici- 
pate his wishes. 

“ There is nothing here that is needed. Get me some linen ; 
try and see if you can’t find some more mattresses ; show my 
men where the pump is ” 

And they ran as if their life was at stake to do his bidding ; 
were so active that they seemed to be ubiquitous. 

The factory was admirably adapted for a hospital. The 
drying-room was a particularly noticeable feature, a vast apart- 
ment with numerous and lofty windows for light and ventila- 
tion, where they could put in a hundred beds and yet have 
room to spare, and at one side was a shed that seemed to have 
been built there especially for the convenience of the opera- 
tors : three long tables had been brought in, the pump was 


236 


THE DOWNFALL 


close at hand, and a small grass-plot adjacent might serve as 
ante-chamber for the patients while awaiting their turn. And 
the handsome old elms, with their deliciously cool shade, roofed 
the spot in most agreeably. 

Bouroche had considered it would be best to establish him- 
self in Sedan at the commencement, foreseeing the dreadful 
slaughter and the inevitable panic that would sooner or later 
drive the troops to the shelter of the ramparts. All that he 
had deemed it necessary to leave with the regiment was two 
flying ambulances and some “ first aids,” that were to send 
him in the casualties as rapidly as possible after applying the 
primary dressings. The details of litter-bearers were all out 
there, whose duty it was to pick up the wounded under fire, 
and with them were the ambulance wagons and fourgo7is of the 
medical train. The two assistant-surgeons and three hospital 
stewards whom he had retained, leaving two assistants on the 
field, would doubtless be sufficient to perform what operations 
were necessary. He had also a corps of dressers under him. 
But he was not gentle in manner and language, for all he 
did was done impulsively, zealously, with all his heart and 
soul. 

“ Tonnerre de Dieu ! how do you suppose we are going to 
distinguish the cases from one another when they begin to 
come in presently? Take a piece of charcoal and number 
each bed with a big figure on the wall overhead, and place 
those mattresses closer together, do you hear? We can 
strew some straw on the floor in that corner if it becomes 
necessary.” 

The guns were barking, preparing his work for him ; he 
knew that at any moment now the first carriage might drive 
up and discharge its load of maimed and bleeding flesh, and 
he hastened to get all in readiness in the great, bare room. 
Outside in the shed the preparations were of another nature : 
the chests were opened and their contents arranged in order 
on actable, packages of lint, bandages, compresses, rollers, 
splints for fractured limbs, while on another table, alongside a 
- great jar of cerate and a bottle of chloroform, were the sur- 
gical cases with their blood-curdling array of glittering instru- 
ments, probes, forceps, bistouries, scalpels, scissors, saws, an 
arsenal of implements of every imaginable shape adapted to 
pierce, cut, slice, rend, crush. But there was a deficient supply 
of basins. 

“ You must have pails, pots, jars about the house — some- 


THE DOWNFALL 


237 


thing that will hold water. We can’t work besmeared with 
blood all day, that’s certain. And sponges, try to get me 
some sponges.” 

Madame Delaherche hurried away and returned, followed by 
three women bearing a supply of the desired vessels. Gil- 
berte, standing by the table where the instruments were laid 
out, summoned Henriette to her side by a look and pointed to 
them with a little shudder. They grasped each other’s hand 
and stood for a moment without speaking, but their mute clasp 
was eloquent of the solemn feeling of terror and pity that filled 
both their souls. And yet there was a difference, for one 
retained, even in her distress, the involuntary smile of her 
bright youth, while in the eyes of the other, pale as death, was 
the grave earnestness of the heart which, one love lost, can 
never love again. 

“ How terrible it must be, dear, to have an arm or leg cut 
off ! ” 

‘‘ Poor fellows ! ” 

Bouroche had just finished placing a mattress on each of 
the three tables, covering them carefully with oil-cloth, when 
the sound of horses’ hoofs was heard outside and the first am- 
bulance wagon rolled into the court. There were ten men in 
it, seated on the lateral benches, only slightly wounded, two 
or three of them carrying their arm in a sling, but the majority 
hurt about the head. They alighted with but little assistance, 
and the inspection of their cases commenced forthwith. 

One of them, scarcely more than a boy, had been shot 
through the shoulder, and as Henriette was tenderly assisting 
him to draw off his greatcoat, an operation that elicited cries 
of pain, she took notice of the number of his regiment. 

“ Why, you belong to the io6th ! Are you in Captain Beau- 
doin’s company ? ” 

No, he belonged to Captain Bonnaud’s company, but for 
all that he was well acquainted with Corporal Macquart and 
felt pretty certain that his squad had not been under fire as 
yet. The tidings, meager as they were, sufficed to remove a 
great load from the young woman’s heart : her brother was 
alive and well ; if now her husband would only return, as she 
was expecting every moment he would do, her mind would be 
quite at rest. 

At that moment, just as Henriette raised her head to listen 
to the cannonade, which was then roaring with increased 
viciousness, she was thunderstruck to see Delaherche stand- 


238 


THE DOWNFALL 


ing* only a few steps away in the middle of a group of men, to 
whom he was telling the story of the frightful dangers he had 
encountered in getting from JBazeilles to Sedan. How did he 
happen to be there ? She had not seen him come in. She 
darted toward him. 

“ Is not my husband with you ? " 

But Delaherche, who was just then replying to the fond 
questions of his wife and mother, was in no haste to answer. 

“ Wait, wait a moment.” And resuming his narrative : 
“ Twenty times between Bazeilles and Balan I just missed 
being killed. It was a storm, a regular hurricane, of shot and 
shell ! And I saw the Emperor, too. Oh ! but he is a brave 
man ! And after leaving Balan I ran ” 

Henriette shook him by the arm. 

“ My husband ? ” 

“ Weiss ? why, he stayed behind there, Weiss did.” 

“ What do you mean, behind there ? ” 

“ Why, yes ; he picked up the musket of a dead soldier, and 
is fighting away with the best of them.” 

“ He is fighting, you say ?- and why ?” 

“ He must be out of his head, I think. He would not come 
with me, and of course I had to leave him.” 

Henriette gazed at him fixedly, with wide-dilated eyes. 
For a moment no one spoke ; then in a calm voice she de- 
clared her resolution. 

“ It is well ; I will go to him.” 

What, she, go to him ? But it was impossible, it was pre- 
posterous ! Delaherche had more to say of his hurricane of 
shot and shell. Gilberte seized her by the wrists to detain 
her, while Madame Delaherche used all her persuasive powers 
to convince her of the folly of the mad undertaking. In the 
same gentle, determined tone she repeated : 

“ It is useless ; I will go to him.” 

She would only wait to adjust upon her head the lace scarf 
that Gilberte had been wearing and which the latter insisted 
she should accept. In the hope that his offer might cause her 
to abandon her resolve Delaherche declared that he would go 
with her at least as far as the Balan gate, but just then he caught 
sight of the sentry, who, in all the turmoil and confusion of 
the time, had been pacing uninterruptedly up and down 
before the building that contained the treasure chests of the 
7th corps, and suddenly he remembered, was alarmed, went to 
give a look and assure himself that the millions were there 


THE DOWNFALL 


239 


Still. In the meantime Henriette had reached the portico and 
was about to pass out into the street. 

“ Wait for me, won’t you ? Upon my word, you are as mad 
as your husband ! ” 

Another ambulance had driven up, moreover, and they had 
to wait to let it pass in. It was smaller than the other, having 
but two wheels, and the two men whom it contained, both se- 
verely wounded, rested on stretchers placed upon the floor. 
The first one whom the attendants took out, using the most 
tender precaution, had one hand broken ancf his side torn by 
a splinter of shell ; he was a mass of bleeding flesh. The 
second had his left leg shattered ; and Bouroche, giving 
orders to extend the latter on one of the oil-cloth-covered mat- 
tresses, proceeded forthwith to operate on him, surrounded by 
the staring, pushing crowd of dressers and assistants. Madame 
Delaherche and Gilberte were seated near the grass-plot, em- 
ployed in rolling bandages. 

In the street outside Delaherche had caught up with Henri- 
ette. 

“ Come, my dear Madame Weiss, abandon this foolhardy 
undertaking. How can you expect to find Weiss in all that 
confusion ? Most likely he is no longer there by this time ; 
he is probably making his way home through the fields. I 
assure you that Bazeilles is inaccessible.” 

But she did not even listen to him, only increasing her 
speed, and had now entered the Rue de Menil, her shortest 
way to the Balan gate. It was nearly nine o’clock, and Sedan 
no longer wore the forbidding, funereal aspect of the morning, 
when it awoke to grope and shudder amid the despair and 
gloom of its black fog. The shadows of the houses were 
sharply defined upon the pavement in the bright sunlight, the 
streets were filled with an excited, anxious throng, through 
which orderlies and staff officers were constantly pushing their 
way at a gallop. The chief centers of attraction were the 
straggling soldiers who, even at this early hour of the day, had 
begun to stream into the city, minus arms and equipments, 
some of them slightly wounded, others in an extreme condi- 
tion of nervous excitation, shouting and gesticulating like 
lunatics. And yet the place would have had very much its 
every-day aspect, had it not been for the tight-closed shutters 
of the shops, the lifeless house-fronts, where not a blind was 
open. Then there was the cannonade, that never-ceasing 
cannonade, beneath which earth and rocks, walls and founda- 


240 THE DOWNFALL 

tions, even to the very slates upon the roofs, shook and 
trembled. 

What between the damage that his reputation as a man of 
bravery and politeness would inevitably suffer should he de- 
sert Henriette in her time of trouble, and his disinclination to 
again face the iron hail on the Bazeilles road, Delaherche was 
certainly in a very unpleasant predicament. Just as they 
reached the Balan gate a bevy of mounted officers, returning 
to the city, suddenly came riding up, and they were parted. 
There was a dense crowd of people around the gate, waiting 
for news. It was all in vain that he ran this way and that, 
looking for the young woman in the throng ; she must have 
been beyond the walls by that time, speeding along the road, 
and pocketing his gallantry for use on some future occasion, 
he said to himself aloud : 

“ Very well, so much the worse for her ; it was too idiotic.” 

Then the manufacturer strolled about the city, bourgeois- 
like desirous to lose no portion of the spectacle, and at the 
same time tormented by a constantly increasing feeling of 
anxiety. How was it all to end ? and would not the city suffer 
heavily should the army be defeated ? The questions were 
hard ones to answer ; he could not give a satisfactory solution 
to the conundrum when so much depended on circumstances, 
but none the less he was beginning to feel very uneasy for his 
factory and house in the Rue Maqua, whence he had already 
taken the precaution to remove his securities and valuables and 
bury them in a place of safety. He dropped in at the Hotel 
de Ville, found the Municipal Council sitting in permanent 
session, and loitered away a couple of hours there without 
hearing any fresh news, unless that affairs outside the walls 
were beginning to look very threatening. The army, under 
the pushing and hauling process, pushed back to the rear by 
General Ducrot during the hour and a half while the command 
was in his hands, hauled forward to the front again by de 
Wimpffen, his successor, knew not where to yield obedience, 
and the entire lack of plan and competent leadership, the in- 
comprehensible vacillation, the abandonment of positions only 
to retake them again at terrible cost of life, all these things 
could not fail to end in ruin and disaster. 

From there Delaherche pushed forward to the Sous-Pre- 
fecture to ascertain whether the Emperor had returned yet 
from the field of battle. The only tidings he gleaned here 
were of Marshal MacMahon, who was said to be resting com- 


THE DOWHEALL 


241 


fortably, his wound,’ which was not dangfefous, having been 
dressed by a surgeon. About eleven o'clock, however, as he 
was again going the rounds, his progress was arrested for a 
moment in the Grande-Rue, opposite the Hotel de I’Enrope, 
by a sorry cavalcade of dust-stained horsemen, whose jaded 
nags were moving at a walk, and at their head he recognized 
the Emperor, who was returning after having spent four hours 
on the battle-field. It was plain that death would have noth- 
ing to do with him. The big drops of anguish had washed 
the rouge from off those painted cheeks, the waxed mustache 
had lost its stiffness and drooped over the mouth, and in that 
ashen face, in those dim eyes, was the stupor of one in his last 
agony. One of the officers alighted in front of the hotel and 
proceeded to give some friends, who were collected there, an 
account of their route, from la Moncelle to Givonne, up the 
entire length of the little valley among the soldiers of the ist 
corps, who had already been pressed back by the Saxons 
across the little stream to the right bank ; and they had re- 
turned by the sunken road of the Fond de Givonne, which was 
even then in such an encumbered condition that had the Em- 
peror desired to make his way to the front again he would 
have found the greatest difficulty in doing so. Besides, what 
would it have availed ? 

As Delaherche was drinking in these particulars with greedy 
ears a loud explosion shook the quarter. It was a shell, which 
had demolished a chimney in the Rue Sainte-Barbe, near the 
citadel. There was a general rush and scramble ; men swore 
and women shrieked. He had flattened himself against the 
wall, when another explosion broke the windows in a house not 
far away. The consequences would be dreadful if they should 
shell Sedan ; he made his way back to the Rue Maqua on a keen 
run, and was seized by such an imperious desire to learn the 
truth that he did not pause below stairs, but hurried to the 
roof, where there was a terrace that commanded a view of the 
city and its environs. 

A glance at the situation served to reassure him ; the Ger- 
man fire was not directed against the city ; the batteries at 
Frenois and la Marfee were shelling the Plateau de I’Algerie 
over the roofs of the houses, and now that his alarm had sub- 
sided he could even watch with a certain degree of admira- 
tion the flight of the projectiles as they sailed over Sedan in a 
wide, majestic curve, leaving behind them a faint trail of 
smoke upon the air, like gigantic birds, invisible to mortal eye 


242 


THE DOWNFALL 


and to be traced only by the gray plumage shed by their pin- 
ions. At first it seemed to him quite evident that what damage 
had been done so far was the result of random practice by the 
Prussian gunners : they were not bombarding the city yet ; 
then, upon further consideration, he was of opinion that their 
firing was intended as a response to the ineffectual fire of the 
few guns mounted on the fortifications of the place. Turning 
to the north he looked down from his position upon the ex- 
tended and complex system of defenses of the citadel, the frown- 
ing curtains black with age, the green expanses of the turfed 
glacis, the stern bastions that reared their heads at geomet- 
rically accurate angles, prominent among them the three Cyclo- 
pean salients, the Ecossais, the Grand Jardin, and laRochette, 
while further to the west, in extension of the line, were Fort 
Nassau and Fort Palatinat, above the faubourg of Menil. The 
sight produced in him a melancholy impression of immensity 
and futility. Of what avail were they now against the power- 
ful modern guns with their immense range ? Besides, the 
works were not manned ; cannon, ammunition, men were want- 
ing. Some three weeks previously the governor had invited 
the citizens to organize and form a National Guard, and these 
volunteers were now doing duty as gunners ; and thus it was 
that there were three guns in service at Palatinat, while at the 
Porte de Paris there may have been a half dozen. As they had 
only seven or eight rounds to each gun, however, the men hus- 
banded their ammunition, limiting themselves to a shot every 
half hour, and that only as a sort of salve to their self-respect, 
for none of their missiles reached the enemy : all were lost in 
the meadows opposite them. Hence the enemy’s batteries, 
disdainful of such small game, contemptuously pitched a shell 
at them from time to time, out of charity, as it were. 

Those batteries over across the Tiver were objects of great 
interest to Delaherche. He was eagerly scanning the heights 
of la Marfee with his naked eye, when all at once he thought 
of the spy-glass with which he sometimes amused himself by 
watching the doings of his neighbors from the terrace. He 
ran downstairs and got it, returned and placed it in position, 
and as he was slowly sweeping the horizon and trees, fields, 
houses came within his range of vision, he lighted on that 
group of uniforms, at the angle of a pine wood, over the main 
battery at Frenois, of which Weiss had caught a glimpse from 
Bazeilles. To him, however, thanks to the excellence of his 
glass, it would have been no difficult matter to count the num- 


THE DOWNFALL 


243 


ber of officers of the staff, so distinctly he made them out. 
Some of them were reclining- carelessly on the grass, others 
were conversing in little groups, and in front of them all stood 
a solitary figure, a spare, well-proportioned man to appearances, 
in an unostentatious uniform, who yet asserted in some indefin- 
able way his masterhood. It was the Prussian King, scarce 
half finger high, one of those miniature leaden toys .that afford 
children such delight. Although he was not certain of this 
identity until later on the manufacturer found himself, by 
reason of some inexplicable attraction, constantly returning to 
that diminutive puppet, whose face, scarce larger than a pin’s 
head, was but a pale point against the immense blue sky. 

It was not midday yet, and since nine o’clock the master 
had been watching the movements, inexorable as fate, of his 
armies. Onward, ever onward, they swept, by roads traced 
for them in advance, completing the circle, slowly but surely 
closing in and enveloping Sedan in their living wall of men 
and guns. The army on his left, that had come up across the 
level plain of Donchery, was debouching still from the pass of 
Saint-Albert and, leaving Saint-Menges in its rear, was begin- 
ning to show its heads of columns at Fleigneux ; and, in the rear 
of the Xlth corps, then sharply engaged with General Douay’s 
force, he could discern the Vth corps, availing itself of the shel- 
ter of the woods and advancing stealthily on Illy, while battery 
upon battery came wheeling into position, an ever-lengthening 
line of thundering guns, until the horizon was an unbroken 
ring of fire. On the right the army was now in undisputed 
possession of the valley of the Givonne ; the Xllth corps had 
taken la Moncelle, the Guards had forced the passage of the 
stream at Daigny, compelling General Ducrot to seek the pro- 
tection of the wood of la Garenne, and were pushing up the 
right bank, likewise in full march upon the plateau of Illy. 
Their task was almost done ; one effort more, and up there at 
the north, among those barren fields, on the very verge of the 
dark forests of the Ardennes, the Crown Prince of Prussia 
would join hands with the Crown Prince of Saxony. To the 
south of Sedan the village of Bazeilles was lost to sight in the 
dense smoke of its burning houses, in the clouds of dun vapor 
that rose above the furious conflict. 

And tranquilly, ever since the morning, the King had been 
watching and waiting. An hour yet, two hours, it might be 
three, it mattered not ; it was only a question of time. Wheel 
and pinion, cog and lever, were working in harmony, the 


244 


THE DOWNFALL 


great engine of destruction was in motion, and soon would 
have run its course. In the center of the immense horizon, 
beneath the deep vault of sunlit sky, the bounds of the battle- 
field were ever becoming narrower, the black swarms were 
converging, closing in on doomed Sedan. There were fiery 
reflexions in the windows of the city ; to the left, in the direc- 
tion of the Faubourg de la Cassine, it seemed as if a house 
was burning. And outside the circle of flame and smoke, in 
the fields no longer trodden by armed men, over by Donchery, 
over by Carignan, peace, warm and luminous, lay upon the 
land ; the bright waters of the Meuse, the lusty trees rejoicing 
in their strength, the broad, verdant meadows, the fertile, 
well-kept farms, all rested peacefully beneath the fervid noon- 
day sun. 

Turning to his staff, the King briefly called for informa- 
tion upon some point. It was the royal will to direct each 
move on the gigantic chessboard ; to hold in the hollow of 
his hand the hosts who looked to him for guidance. At his 
left, a flock of swallows, affrighted by the noise of the cannon- 
ade, rose high in air, wheeled, and vanished in the south. 


IV. 

B etween the city and Balan, Henriette got over the 
ground at a good, round pace. It was not yet nine o’clock; 
the broad footj)ath, bordered by gardens and pretty cottages, 
was as yet comparatively free, although as she approached the 
village it began to be more and more obstructed by flying citi- 
zens and moving troops. When she saw a great surge of the 
human tide advancing on her she hugged the walls and 
house-fronts, and by dint of address and perseverance slipped 
through, somehow. The fold of black lace that half concealed 
her fair hair and small, pale face, the sober gown that envel- 
oped her slight form, made her an inconspicuous object among 
the throng ; she went her way unnoticed by the by-passers, 
and nothing retarded her light, silent steps. 

At Balan, however, she found the road blocked by a regi- 
ment of infanteriede marine. It was a compact mass of men, 
drawn up under the tall trees that concealed them from the 
enemy’s observation, awaiting orders. She raised herself on 
tiptoe, and could not see the end ; still, she made herself as 
small as she could and attempted to worm her way through. 


THE DOWNFALL 


245 


The men shoved her with their elbows, and the butts of their 
muskets made acquaintance with her ribs ; when she had ad- 
vanced a dozen paces there was a chorus of shouts and angry 
protests. A captain turned on her and roughly cried : 

“ Hi, there, you woman ! are you crazy ? Where are you 
going ? " 

“ 1 am going to Bazeilles." 

“ What, to Bazeilles ? ” 

There was a shout of laughter. The soldiers pointed at 
her with their fingers ; she was the object of their witticisms. 
The captain, also, greatly amused by the incident, had to have 
his joke. 

“You should take us along with you, my little dear, if you 
are going to Bazeilles. We were there a short while ago, and 
I am in hope that we shall go back there, but I can tell 
you that the temperature of the place is none too cool.” 

“ I am going to Bazeilles to look for my husband,” Henri- 
ette declared, in her gentle voice, while her blue eyes shone 
with undiminished resolution. 

The laughter ceased ; an old sergeant extricated her from 
the crowd that had collected around her, and forced her to 
retrace her steps. 

“ My poor child, you see it is impossible to get through. 
Bazeilles is no place for you. You will find your husband by 
and by. Come, listen to reason ! ” 

She had to obey, and stood aside beneath the trees, raising 
herself on her toes at every moment to peer before her, firm 
in her resolve to continue her journey as soon as she should be 
allowed to pass. She learned the condition of affairs from the 
conversation that went on around her. Some officers were 
criticising with great acerbity the order for the abandonment 
of Bazeilles, which had occurred at a quarter-past eight, at the 
time when General Ducrot, taking over the command from the 
marshal, had considered it best to concentrate the troops on 
the plateau of Illy. What made matters worse was, that the 
valley of the Givonne having fallen into the hands of the Ger- 
mans through the premature retirement of the 1st corps, the 
12th corps, which was even then sustaining a vigorous attack 
in front, was overlapped on its left flank. Now that General 
de Wimpffen had relieved General Ducrot, it seemed that the 
original plan was to be carried out. Orders had been received 
to retake Bazeilles at every cost, and drive the Bavarians into 
the Meuse. And so, in the ranks of that regiment that had 


246 


THE DOWNFALL 


been halted there in full retreat at the entrance of the village 
and ordered to resume the offensive, there was much bitter 
feeling, and angry words were rife. Was ever such stupidity 
heard of ? to make them abandon a position, and immediately 
tell them to turn round and retake it from the enemy ! They 
were willing enough to risk their life in the cause, but no one 
cared to throw it away for nothing ! 

A body 6f mounted men dashed up the street and General 
de Wimpffen appeared among them, and raising himself erect 
on his stirrups, with flashing eyes, he shouted, in ringing 
tones : 

“ Friends, we cannot retreat ; it would be ruin to us all. 
And if we do have to retreat, it shall be on Carignan, and not 
on M^zieres. But we shall be victorious ! You beat the enemy 
this morning ; you will beat them again ! ” 

He galloped off on a road that conducted to la Moncelle. 
It was said that there had been a violent altercation between 
him and General Ducrot, each upholding his own plan, and 
decrying the plan of the other — one asserting that retreat by 
way of Mezieres had been impracticable all that morning ; the 
other predicting that, unless they fell back on Illy, the army 
would be surrounded before night. And there was a great 
deal of bitter recrimination, each taxing the other with ignor- 
ance of the country and of the situation of the troops. The 
pity of it was that both were right. 

But Henriette, meantime, had made an encounter that caused 
her to forget her project for a moment. In some poor outcasts, 
stranded by the wayside, she had recognized a family of honest 
weavers from Bazeilles, father, mother, and three little girls, of 
whom the largest was only nine years old. They were utterly 
disheartened and forlorn, and so weary and footsore that they 
could go no further, and had thrown themselves down at the 
foot of a wall. 

“ Alas ! dear lady,” the wife and mother said to Henriette, 
“ we have lost our all. Our house — you know where our house 
stood on the Place de TEglise — well, a shell came and burned 
it. Why we and the children did not stay and share its fate I 
do not know ” 

At these words the three little ones began to cry and sob 
afresh, while the mother, in distracted language, gave further 
details of the catastrophe. 

“ The loom, I saw it burn like seasoned kindling wood, and 
the bed, the chairs and tables, they blazed like so much straw. 


THE DOWHEaLL 247 

And even the clock — yes, the poor old clock that I tried to 
save and could not.” 

“ My God ! my God ! ” the man exclaimed, his eyes swim- 
ming with tears, “ what is to become of us ? ” 

Henriette endeavored to comfort them, but it was in a voice 
that quavered strangely. 

“You have been preserved to each other, you a,re safe and 
unharmed ; your three little girls are left you. What reason 
have you to complain ? ” 

Then she proceeded to question them to learn how matters 
stood in Bazeilles, whether they had seen her husband, in what 
state they had left her house, but in their half-dazed condition 
they gave conflicting answers. No, they had not seen M. 
Weiss. One of the little girls, however, declared that she had 
seen him, and that he was lying on the ground with a great 
hole in his head, whereon the father gave her a box on the ear, 
bidding her hold her tongue and not tell such lies to the lady. 
As for the house, they could say with certainty that it was 
intact at the time of their flight ; they even remembered to 
have observed, as they passed it, that the doors and windows 
were tightly secured, as if it was quite deserted. At that time, 
moreover, the only foothold that the^ Bavarians had secured 
for themselves was in the Place de I’Eglise, and to carry the 
village they would have to fight for it, street by street, house 
by house. They must have been gaining ground since then, 
though ; all Bazeilles was in flames by that time, like enough, 
and not a wall left standing, thanks to the fierceness of the 
assailants and the resolution of the defenders. And so the 
poor creatures went on, with trembling, affrighted gestures, 
evoking the horrid sights their eyes had seen and telling their 
dreadful tale of slaughter and conflagration and corpses lying 
in heaps upon the ground. 

“ But my husband ? ” Henriette asked again. 

They made no answer, only continued to cover their face 
with their hands and sob. Her cruel anxiety, as she stood 
there erect, with no outward sign of weakness, was only evinced 
by a slight quivering of the lips. What was she to believe ? 
Vainly she told herself the child was mistaken ; her mental 
vision pictured her husband lying there dead before her in the 
street with a bullet wound in the head. Again, that house, 
so securely locked and bolted, was another source of alarm ; 
why was it so ? was he no longer in it ? The conviction that 
he was dead sent an icy chill to her heart ; but perhaps he was 


THE downfall 


248 

only wounded, perhaps he was breathing still ; and so sudden 
and' imperious-was the need she felt of flying to his side that 
she would again have attempted to force her passage through 
the troops had not the bugles just then sounded the order for 
them to advance. 

The regiment was largely composed of raw, half-drilled 
recruits from Toulon, Brest, and Rochefort, men who had 
never fired a shot, but all that morning they had fought with 
a bravery and firmness that would not have disgraced veteran 
troops. They had not shown much aptitude for marching on 
the road from Rheims to Mouzon, weighted as they were with 
their unaccustomed burdens, but when they came to face the 
enemy their discipline and sense of duty made themselves felt, 
and notwithstanding the righteous anger that was in their 
hearts, the bugle had but to sound and they returned to 
brave the fire and encounter the foe. Three several times they 
had been promised a division to support them ; it never came. 
They felt that they were deserted, sacrificed ; it was the olTer- 
ing of their life that was demanded of them by those who, 
having first made them evacuate the place, were now sending 
them back into the fiery furnace of Bazeilles. And they knew 
it, and they gave their life, freely, without a murmur, closing 
up their ranks and leaving the shelter of the trees to meet 
afresh the storm of shell and bullets. 

Henriette gave a deep sigh of relief ; at last they were about 
to move ! She followed them, with the hope that she might 
enter the village unperceived in their rear, prepared to run 
with them should they take the double-quick. But they had 
scarcely begun to move when they came to a halt again. The 
projectiles were now falling thick and fast ; to regain posses- 
sion of Bazeilles it would be necessary to dispute every inch 
of the road, occupying the cross-streets, the houses and gar- 
dens on either side of the way. A brisk fire of musketry 
proceeded from the head of the column, the advance was 
irregular, by fits and starts, every petty obstacle entailed a 
delay of many minutes. She felt that she would never attain 
her end by remaining there at the rear of the column, waiting 
for it to fight its way through, and with prompt decision she 
bent her course to the right and took a path that led down- 
ward between two hedges to the meadows. 

Henriette’s plan now was to reach Bazeilles by those broad 
levels that border the Meuse. She was not very clear about 
it in her mind, however, and continued to hasten onward in 


THli DOWNFALL 


249 

obedience to that blind instinct which had originally imparted* 
to her its impulse. She had not gone far before she found 
herself standing and gazing in dismay at a miniature ocean 
which barred her further progress in that direction. It was 
the inundated fields, the low-lying lands that a measure of 
defense had converted into a lake, which had escaped her 
memory. For a single moment she thought of turning back ; 
then, at the risk of leaving her shoes behind, she pushed on, 
hugging the bank, through the water that covered the grass 
and rose above her ankles. For a hundred yards her way, 
though difficult, was not impracticable ; then she encountered 
a garden-wall directly in her front ; the ground fell off sharply, 
and where the wall terminated the water was six feet deep. 
Her path was closed effectually ; she clenched her little 
fists and had to summon up all her ^solution' to keep 
from bursting into tears. When the first shock of disappoint- 
ment had passed over she made her way along the enclosure 
and found a narrow lane that pursued a tortuous course 
among the scattered houses. She believed that now her 
troubles were at an end, for she was acquainted with that 
labyrinth, that tangled maze of passages, which, to one who 
had the key to them, ended at the village. 

But the missiles seemed to be falling there even more 
thickly than elsewhere. Henriette stopped short in her 
tracks and all the blood in her body seemed to flow back 
upon her heart at a frightful detonation, so close that she 
could feel the wind upon her cheek. A shell had exploded 
directly before her and only a few yards away. She turned 
her head and scrutinized for a moment the heights of the left 
bank, above which the smoke from the German batteries was 
curling upward ; she saw what she must do, and when she 
started on her way again it was with eyes fixed on the hori- 
zon, watching for the shells in order to avoid them. There 
was method in the rash daring of her proceeding, and all the 
brave tranquillity that the prudent little housewife had at her 
command. She was not going to be killed if she could help 
it ; she wished to find her husband and bring him back with 
her, that they might yet have many days of happy life together. 
The projectiles still came tumbling frequently as ever ; she 
sped along behind walls, made a cover of boundary stones, 
availed herself of every slight depression. But pre.sently she 
came to an open space, a bit of unprotected road where splin- 
ters and fragments of exploded shells lay thick, and she was 


250 


THE DOWETEALL 


• watching behind a shed for a chance to make a dash when 
she perceived, emerging from a sort of cleft in the ground in 
front of her, a human head and two bright eyes that peered 
about inquisitively. It was a little, bare-footed, ten-year-old 
boy, dressed in a shirt and ragged trousers, an embryonic 
tramp, who was watching the battle with huge delight. At 
every report his small black beady eyes would snap and 
sparkle, and he jubilantly shouted : 

“ Oh my ! aint it bully ! — Look out, there comes another 
one ! don’t stir i Boom ! that was a rouser ! — Don’t stir ! 
don’t stir ! ” 

And each time there came a shell he dived to the bottom 
of his hole, then reappeared, showing his dirty, elfish face, 
until it was time to duck again. 

Henriette no^ noticed that the projectiles all came 
from Liry, while the batteries at Pont-Maugis and Noyers 
were confining their attention to Balan. At each discharge 
she could see the smoke distinctly, immediately afterward she 
heard the scream of the shell, succeeded by the explosion. 
Just then the gunners afforded them a brief respite ; the 
bluish haze above the heights drifted slowly away upon the 
wind. 

“ They’ve stopped to take a drink, you can go your money 
on it,” said the urchin. “ Quick, quick, give me your hand ! 
Now’s the time to skip ! ” 

He took her by the hand and dragged her along with him, 
and in this way they crossed the open together, side by side, 
running for dear life, with head and shoulders down. When 
they were safely ensconced behind a stack that opportunely 
offered its protection at the end of their course and turned to 
look behind them, they beheld another shell come rushing 
through the air and alight upon the shed at the very spot they 
had occupied so lately. The crash was fearful; the shed was 
knocked to splinters. The little ragamuffin considered that a 
capital joke, and fairly danced with glee. 

“ Bravo, hit ’em agin ! that’s the way to do it ! — But it was 
time for us to skip, though, wasn’t it ? ” 

But again Henriette struck up against insurmountable ob- 
stacles in the shape of hedges and garden-walls, that offered 
absolutely no outlet. Her irrepressible companion, still wear- 
ing his broad grin and remarking that where there was a will 
there was a way, climbed to the coping of a wall and assisted 
her to scale it. On reaching the further side they found them- 


THE DOWNFALL 


251 


selves in a kitchen garden among beds of peas and string- 
beans and surrounded by fences on every side ; their sole 
exit was through the little cottage of the gardener. The boy 
led the way, swinging his arms and whistling unconcernedly, 
with an expression on his face of most profound indifference. 
He pushed open a door that admitted him to a bedroom, from 
which he passed on into another room, where there was an old 
woman, apparently the only living being upon the premises. 
She was standing by a table, in a sort of dazed stupor ; she 
lojoked at the two strangers who thus unceremoniously made a 
highway of her dwelling, but addressed them no word, nor did 
they speak a word to her. They vanished as quickly as they 
had appeared, emerging by the exit opposite their entrance 
upon an alley that they followed for a moment. After that 
there were other difficulties to be surmounted, and thus they 
went on for more than half a mile, scaling walls, struggling 
through hedges, availing themselves of every short cut that 
offered, it might be the door of a stable or the window of a 
cottage, as the exigencies of the case demanded. Dogs 
howled mournfully ; they had a narrow escape from being run 
down by a cow that was plunging along, wild with terror. It 
seemed as if they must be approaching the village, however ; 
there was an odor of burning wood in the air, and momently 
volumes of reddish smoke, like veils of finest gauze floating in 
the wind, passed athwart the sun and obscured his light. 

All at once the urchin came to a halt and planted himself in 
front of Henriette. 

“ I say, lady, tell us where you’re going, will you ? ” 

“ You can see very well where I am going ; to Bazeilles.” 

He gave a low whistle of astonishment, following it up with 
the shrill laugh of the careless vagabond to whom nothing is 
sacred, who is not particular upon whom or what he launches 
his irreverent gibes. 

“ To Bazeilles — oh, no, I guess not ; I don’t think my busi- 
ness lies that way — I have another engagement. Bye-bye, 
ta-ta ! ” 

He turned on his heel and was off like a shot, and she was 
none the wiser as to whence he came or whither he went. 
She had found him in a hole, she had lost sight of him at the 
corner of a wall, and never was she to set eyes on him 
again. 

When she was alone again Henriette experienced a strange 
sensation of fear. He had been no protection to her, that 


THE DOWNFALL 


252 

scrubby urchin, but his chatter had been a distraction ; he had 
kept her spirits up by his way of making game of everything, 
as if it was all one huge raree show. Now she was beginning 
to tremble, her strength was failing her, she, who by nature 
was so courageous. The shells no longer fell around her : 
the Germans had ceased firing on Bazeilles, probably to avoid 
killing their own men, who were now masters of the village ; 
but within the last few minutes she had heard the whistling of 
bullets, that peculiar sound like the buzzing of a bluebottle fly, 
that she recognized by having heard it described. Thbre 
was such a raging, roaring clamor rising to the heavens in the 
distance, the confused uproar of other sounds was so violent, 
that in it she failed to distinguish the report of musketry. As 
she was turning the corner of a house there was a deadened 
thud close at her ear, succeeded by the sound of falling plas- 
ter, which brought her to a sudden halt; it was a bullet that 
had struck the facade. She was pale as death, and asked her- 
self if her courage would be sufficient to carry her through to 
the end ; and before she had time to frame an answer, she re- 
ceived what seemed to her a blow from a hammer upon her 
forehead, and sank, stunned, upon her knees. It was a spent 
ball that had ricocheted and struck her a little above the left 
eyebrow with sufficient force to raise an ugly contusion. When 
she came to, raising her hands to her forehead, she withdrew 
them covered with blood. But the pressure of her fingers had 
assured her that the bone beneath was uninjured, and she 
said aloud, encouraging herself by the sound of her own 
voice : 

“ It is nothing, it is nothing. Come, I am not afraid ; no, 
no ! I am not afraid.” 

And it was the truth ; she arose, and from that time walked 
amid the storm of bullets with absolute indifference, like one 
whose soul is parted from his body, who reasons not, who 
gives his life. She marched straight onward, with head erect, 
no longer seeking to shelter herself, and if she struck out at a 
swifter pace it was only that she might reach her appointed 
end more quickly. The death-dealing missiles pattered on the 
road before and behind her ; twenty times they were near tak- 
ing her life ; she never noticed them. At last she was at Ba- 
zeilles, and struck diagonally across a field of lucerne in order 
to regain the road, the main street that traversed the village. 
Just as she turned into it she cast her eyes to the right, and 
there, some two hundred paces from her, beheld her house in 


THE DOWNEALL 


253 

a blaze. The flames were invisible against the bright sunlight ; 
the roof had already fallen in in part, the windows were belch- 
ing dense clouds of black smoke. She could restrain herself 
no longer, and ran with all her strength. 

Ever since eight o’clock Weiss, abandoned by the retiring 
troops, had been a self-made prisoner there. His return to 
Sedan had become an impossibility, for the Bavarians, imme- 
diately upon the withdrawal of the French, had swarmed down 
from the park of Montivilliers and occupied the road. He 
was alone and defenseless, save for his musket and what few 
cartridges were left him, when he beheld before his door a 
little band of soldiers, ten in number, abandoned, like himself, 
and parted from their comrades, looking about them for a 
place where they might defend themselves and sell their lives 
dearly. He ran downstairs to admit them, and thenceforth 
the house had a garrison, a lieutenant, corporal and eight 
men, all bitterly inflamed against the enemy, and resolved 
never to surrender. 

“ What, Laurent, you here ! ” he exclaimed, surprised to 
recognize among the soldiers a tall, lean young man, who held 
in his hand a musket, doubtless taken from some corpse. 

Laurent was dressed in jacket and trousers of blue cloth ; 
he was helper to a gardener of the neighborhood, and had lately 
lost his mother and his wife, both of whom had been carried 
off by the same insidious fever. 

“ And why shouldn’t I be? ” he replied. ^ All I have is my 
skin, and I’m willing to give that. And then I am not such a 
bad shot, you know, and it will be just fun for me to blaze 
away at those rascals and knock one of ’em over every time.” 

The lieutenant and the corporal had already begun to make 
an inspection of the premises. There was nothing to be done 
on the ground floor ; all they did was to push the furniture 
against the door and windows in such a way as to form as 
secure a barricade as possible. After attending to that they 
proceeded to arrange a plan for the defense of the three small 
rooms of the first floor and the open attic, making no change, 
however, in the measures that had been already taken by 
Weiss, the protection of the windows by mattresses, the loop- 
holes cut here and there in the slats of the blinds. As the 
lieutenant was leaning from the window to take a survey of 
their surroundings, he heard the wailing cry of a child. 

“ What is that ? ” he asked. 

Weiss looked from the window, and, in the adjoining dye- 


254 


THE DOWNFALL 


house, beheld the little sick boy, Charles, his scarlet face resting 
on the white pillow, imploringly begging his mother to bring 
him a drink : his mother, who lay dead across the threshold, 
beyond hearing or answering. With a sorrowful expression he 
replied : 

“ It is a poor little child next door, there, crying for his 
mother, who was killed by a Prussian shell.'’ 

“ Tonnerre de Dieii!" muttered Laurent, “ how are they ever 
going to pay for all these things ! ” 

As yet only a few random shots had struck the front of the 
house. Weiss and the lieutenant, accompanied by the corporal 
and two men, had ascended to the attic, where they were in 
better position to observe the road,^ of which they had an 
oblique view as far as the Place de I’Eglise. The square was 
now occupied by the Bavarians, but any further advance was 
attended by difficulties that made them very circumspect. A 
handful of French soldiers, posted at the mouth of a narrow 
lane, held them in check for nearly a quarter of an hour, with 
a fire so rapid and continuous that the dead bodies lay in piles. 
The next obstacle they encountered was a house on the oppo- 
site corner, which also detained them some time before they 
could get possession of it. At one time a woman, with a mus- 
ket in her hands, was seen through the smoke, firing from one 
of the windows. It was the abode of a baker, and a few sol- 
diers were there in addition to the regular occupants ; and 
when the house was finally carried there was a hoarse shout : 
“ No quarter ! ” a surging, struggling, vociferating throng 
poured from the door and rolled across the street to the dead- 
wall opposite, and in the raging torrent were seen the woman’s 
skirt, the jacket of a man, the white hairs of the grandfather ; 
then came the crash of a volley of musketry, and the wall was 
splashed with blood from base to coping. This was a point 
on which the Germans were inexorable ; everyone caught with 
arms in his hands and not belonging to some uniformed organ- 
ization was shot without the formality of a trial, as having 
violated the law of nations. They were enraged at the obsti- 
nate resistance offered them by the village, and the frightful 
loss they had sustained during the five hours’ conflict provoked 
them to the most atrocious reprisals. The gutters ran red 
with blood, the piled dead in the streets formed barricades, 
some of the more open places were charnel-houses, from whose 
depths rose the death-rattle of men in their last agony. And 
in every house that they had to carry by assault in this way 


THE DOWNFALL 


255 


men were seen distributing wisps of lighted straw, others ran 
to and fro with blazing torches, others smeared the walls and 
furniture with petroleum ; soon whole streets were burning, 
Bazeilles was in flames. 

And now Weiss’s was the only house in the central portion 
of the village that still continued to hold out, preserving its 
air of menace, like some stern citadel determined not to yield. 

“ Look out ! here they come ! ” shouted the lieutenant. 

A simultaneous discharge from the attic and the first floor 
laid low three of the Bavarians, who had come forward hug- 
ging the walls. The remainder of the body fell back and 
posted themselves under cover wherever the street offered 
facilities, and the siege of the house began ; the bullets pelted 
on the front like rattling hail. For nearly ten minutes the 
fusillade continued without cessation, damaging the stucco, 
but not doing much mischief otherwise, until one of the men 
whom the lieutenant had taken with him to the garret was so 
imprudent as to show himself at a window, when a bullet 
struck him square in the forehead, killing him instantly. It 
was plain that whoever exposed himself would do so at peril 
of his life. 

“ Doggone it ! there’s one gone ! ” growled the lieutenant. 
“Be careful, will you ; there’s not enough of us that we can 
afford to let ourselves be killed for the fun of it ! ” 

He had taken a musket and was firing away like the rest of 
them from behind the protection of a shutter, at the same 
time watching and encouraging his men. It was Laurent, the 
gardener’s helper, however, who more than all the others ex- 
cited his wonder and admiration. Kneeling on the floor, with 
hischassepot peering out of the narrow aperture of a loophole, 
he never fired until absolutely certain of his aim ; he even told 
in advance where he intended hitting his living target. 

“ That little officer in blue that you see down there, in the 
heart. — That other fellow, the tall, lean one, between the 
eyes. — I don’t like the looks of that fat man vyith the red beard ; 
I think I’ll let him have it in the stomach.” 

And each time his man went down as if struck by lightning, 
hit in the very spot he had mentioned, and he continued to fire 
at intervals, coolly, without haste, there being no necessity for 
hurrying himself, as he remarked, since it would require too 
long a time to kill them all in that way. 

“Oh ! if I had but my eyes ! ” Weiss impatiently exclaimed. 
He had broken his spectacles a while before, to his great sor- 


256 


THE DOWNFALL 


row. He had his double eye-glass still, but the perspiration 
was rolling down his face in such streams that it was impossi- 
ble to keep it on his nose. His usual calm collectedness was 
entirely lost in his over-mastering passion ; and thus, between 
his defective vision and his agitated nerves, many of his shots 
were wasted. 

“ Don’t hurry so, it is only throwing away powder,” said 
Laurent. “ Do you see that man who has lost his helmet, over 
yonder by the grocer’s shop ? Well, now draw a bead on him, 
— carefully, don’t hurry. That’s first-rate ! you have broken his 
paw for him and made him dance a jig in his own blood.” 

Weiss, rather pale in the face, gave a look at the result of 
his marksmanship. 

“ Put him out of his misery,” he said. 

“ What, waste a cartridge ! Not much. Better save it for 
another of ’em.” 

The besiegers could not have failed to notice the remarkable 
practice of the invisible sharpshooter in the attic. Whoever 
of them showed himself in the open was certain to remain 
there. They therefore brought up re-enforcements and placed 
them in position, with instructions to maintain an unremitting 
fire upon the roof of the building. It was not long before the 
attic became untenable ; the slates were perforated as if they 
had been tissue paper, the bullets found their way to every 
nook and corner, buzzing and humming as if the room had 
been invaxled by a swarm of angry bees. Death stared them 
all in the face if they remained there longer. 

“ We will go downstairs,” said the lieutenant. “ We can 
hold the first floor for a while )^et.” But as he was making for 
the ladder a bullet struck him in the groin and he fell. “ Too 
late, doggone it ! ” 

Weiss and Laurent, aided by the remaining soldiers, carried 
him below, notwithstanding his vehement protests ; he told 
them not to waste their time on him, his time had come; he 
might as well die up stairs as down. He was still able to be 
of service to them,' however, when they had laid him on a bed 
inf a room of the first floor, by advising them what was best 
to do. 

“ Fire into the mass,” he said ; “ don’t stop to take aim. 
They are too cowardly to risk an advance unless they see your 
fire begin to slacken.” 

And so the siege of the little house went on as if it was to 
last for eternity, T wenty times it seemed as if it must be swept 


THE DOWNFALL 


^57 


away bodily by the storm of iron that beat upon it, and each 
time, as the smoke drifted away, it was seen amid the sulphur- 
ous blasts, torn, pierced, mangled, but erect and menacing, 
spitting fire and lead with undiminished venom from each one 
of its orifices. 'I'he assailants, furious that they should be de- 
tained for such length of time and lose so many men before 
such a hovel, yelled and fired wildly in the distance, but 
had not courage to attempt to carry the lower floor by a 
rush. 

“ Look out ! ” shouted the corporal, “ there is a shutter about 
to fall ! ” 

The concentrated fire had torn one of the inside blinds from 
its hinges, but Weiss darted forward and pushed a wardrobe 
before the window, and Laurent was enabled to continue his 
operations under cover. One of the soldiers was lying at his 
feet with his jaw broken, losing blood freely. Another re- 
ceived a bullet in his chest, and dragged himself over to the 
wall, where he lay gasping in protracted agony, while convul- 
sive movements shook his frame at intervals. They were but 
eight, now, all told, not counting the lieutenant, who, too weak 
to speak, his back supported by the headboard of the bed, con- 
tinued to give his directions by signs. As had been the case 
with the attic, the three rooms of the first floor were begin- 
ning to be untenable, for the mangled mattresses no longer 
afforded protection against the missiles ; at every instant the 
plaster fell in sheets from the walls and ceiling, and the fur- 
niture was in process of demolition : the sides of the ward- 
robe yawned as if they had been cloven by an ax. And worse 
still, the ammunition was nearly exhausted. 

“ It’s too bad ! ” grumbled Laurent ; “just when everything 
was going so beautifully ! ” 

But suddenly Weiss was struck with an idea. 

“ Wait ! ” 

He had thought of the dead soldier up in the garret above, 
and climbed up the ladder to search for the cartridges he must 
have about him. A wide space of the roof had been cruslied 
in ; he saw the blue sky, a patch of bright, wholesome light 
that made him start. Not wishing to be killed, he crawled 
over the floor on his hands and knees, then, when he had the 
cartridges in his po.ssesion, some thirty of them, he made haste 
down again as fast his legs could carry him. 

Downstairs, as he was sharing his newly acquired treasure 
with the gardener’s lad, a soldier uttered a piercing cry and 


258 


THE DOWNFALL 


sank to his knees. They were but seven ; and presently they 
were but six, a bullet having entered the corporal’s head at 
the eye and lodged in the brain. 

From that time on, Weiss had no distinct consciousness of 
what was going on around him ; he and the five others con- 
tinued to blaze away like lunatics, expending their cartridges, 
with not the faintest idea in their heads that there could be 
such a thing as surrender. In the three small rooms the floor 
was strewn with fragments of the broken furniture. Ingress 
and egress were barred by the corpses that lay before the doors; 
in one corner a wounded man kept up a pitiful wail that was 
frightful to hear. Every inch of the floor was slippery with 
blood ; a thin stream of blood from the attic was crawl- 
ing lazily down the stairs. And the air was scarce respirable, 
an air thick and hot with sulphurous fumes, heavy with smoke, 
filled with an acrid, nauseating dust ; a darkness dense as that 
of night, through which darted the red flame-tongues of the 
musketry. 

“ By God’s thunder ! ” cried Weiss, “ they are bringing up 
artillery ! ” 

It was true. Despairing of ever reducing that handful of 
madmen, who had consumed so much of their time, the Bavar- 
ians had run up a gun to the corner of the Place de I’Eglise, 
and were putting it into position ; perhaps they would be al- 
lowed to pass when they should have knocked the house to 
pieces with their solid shot. And the honor there was to them 
in the proceeding, the gun trained on them down there in the 
square, excited the bitter merriment of the besieged ; the ut- 
most intensity of scorn was in their gibes. Ah ! the cowardly 
boug7'es^ with their artillery ! Kneeling in his old place still, 
Laurent carefully adjusted his aim and each time picked off a 
gunner, so that the service of the piece became impossible, and 
it was five or six minutes before they fired their first shot. It 
ranged high, moreover, and only clipped away a bit of the 
roof. 

But the end was now at hand. It was all in vain that they 
searched the dead men’s belts ; there was not a single car- 
tridge left. With vacillating steps and haggard faces the six 
groped around the room, seeking what heavy objects they 
might find to hurl from the windows upon their enemies. One 
of them showed himself at the casement, vociferating insults, 
and shaking his fist ; instantly he was pierced by a dozen bul- 
lets ; and there remained but five. What were they to do ? go 


THE DOWNFALL 


259 


down and endeavor to make their escape by way of the garden 
and the meadows ? The question was never answered, for at 
that moment a tumult arose below, a furious mob came tum- 
bling up the stairs : it was the Bavarians, who had at last 
thought of turning the position by breaking down the back 
door and entering the house by that way. For a brief mo- 
ment a terrible hand-to-hand conflict raged in the small rooms 
among the dead bodies and the debris of the furniture. One 
of the soldiers had his chest transfixed by a bayonet thrust, 
the two others were made prisoners, while the attitude of the 
lieutenant, who had given up the ghost, was that of one about 
to give an order, his mouth open, his arm raised aloft. 

While these things were occurring an officer, a big, flaxen- 
haired man, carrying a revolver in his hand, whose bloodshot 
eyes seemed bursting from their sockets, had caught sight of 
Weiss and Laurent, both in their civilian attire ; he roared at 
them in French : 

“ Who are you, you fellows ? and what are you doing 
here ? ” 

Then, glancing at their faces, black with powder- stains, he 
saw how matters stood, he heaped insult and abuse on them in 
guttural German, in a voice that shook with anger. Already 
he had raised his revolver and was about to send a bullet into 
their heads, when the soldiers of his command rushed in, seized 
Laurent and Weiss, and hustled them out to the staircase. 
The two men were borne along like straws upon a mill-race 
amidst that seething human torrent, under whose pressure they 
were hurled from out the door and sent staggering, stumbling 
across the street to the opposite wall amid a chorus of execra- 
tion that drowned the sound of their officers’ voices. Then, 
for a space of two or three minutes, while the big fair-haired 
officer was endeavoring to extricate them in order to proceed 
with their execution, an opportunity was afforded them to raise 
themselves erect and look about them. 

Other houses had taken fire ; Bazeilles was now a roaring, 
blazing furnace. Flames had begun to appear at the tall win- 
dows of the church and were creeping upward toward the roof. 
Some soldiers who were driving a venerable lady from her 
home had compelled her to furnish the matches with which to 
fire her own beds and curtains. Lighted by blazing brands 
and fed by petroleum in floods, fires were rising and spreading 
in every quarter ; it was no longer civilized warfare, but a con- 
flict of savages, maddened by the long protracted strife, wreak- 


26 o 


THE downfall 


ing vengeance for their dead, their heaps of dead, upon whom 
they trod at every step they took. Yelling, shouting bands 
traversed the streets amid the scurrying smoke and falling 
cinders, swelling the hideous uproar into which entered sounds 
of every kind : shrieks, groans, the rattle of musketry, the crash 
of falling walls. Men could scarce see one another ; great 
livid clouds drifted athwart the sun and obscured his light, 
bearing with them an intolerable stench of soot and blood, 
heavy with the abominations of the slaughter. In every quarter 
the work of death and destruction still went on : the human 
brute unchained, the imbecile wrath, the mad fury, of man 
devouring his brother man. 

And Weiss beheld his house burn before his eyes. Some 
soldiers had applied the torch, others fed the flame by throw- 
ing upon it the fragments of the wrecked furniture. The rez- 
de-chaicss^e was quickly in a blaze, the smoke poured in dense 
black volumes from the wounds in the front and roof. But 
now the dye-house adjoining was also on fire, and horrible to 
relate, the voice of little Charles, lying on his bed delirious 
with fever, could be heard through the crackling of the flames, 
beseeching his mother to bring him a draught of water, while 
the skirts of the wretched woman who, with her disfigured face, 
lay across the door-sill, were even then beginning to kindle. 

“ Mamma, mamma, I am thirsty ! Mamma, bring me a 
drink of water ” 

The weak, faint voice was drowned in the roar of the con- 
flagration ; the cheering of the victors rose on the air in the 
distance. 

But rising above all other sounds, dominating the universal 
clamor, a terrible cry was heard. It was Henriette, who had 
reached the place at last, and now beheld her husband, backed 
up against the wall, facing a platoon of men who were loading 
their muskets. 

She flew to him and threw her arms about his neck. 

“ My God ! what is it ! They cannot be going to kill 
you ! 

Weiss looked at her with stupid, unseeing eyes. She ! his 
wife, so long the object of his desire, so fondly idolized ! A 
great shudder passed through his frame and he awoke to con- 
sciousness of his situation. What had he done ? why had he 
remained there, firing at the enemy, instead of returning to 
her side, as he had promised he would do ? It all flashed 
upon him now, as the darkness is illuminated by the light- 


THE DOWNFALL 


261 


ning’s glare : he had wrecked their happiness, they were to be 
parted, forever parted. Then he noticed the blood upon her 
forehead. 

“ Are you hurt ? he asked. “ You were mad to come ” 

She interrupted him with an impatient gesture. 

“ Never mind me ; it is a mere scratch. But you, you ! 
why are you here ? They shall not kill you ; I will not suffer 
it ! ” 

The officer, who was endeavoring to clear the road in order 
to give the firing party the requisite room, came up on hearing 
the sound of voices, and beholding a woman with her arms 
about the neck of one of his prisoners, exclaimed loudly in 
French : 

“ Come, come, none of this nonsense here ! Whence come 
you ? What is your business here ? " 

“Give me my husband.” 

“ What, is he your husband, that man? His sentence is pro- 
nounced ; the law must take its course.” 

“ Give me my husband.” 

“ Come, be rational. Stand aside ; we do not wish to harm 
you.” 

“ Give me my husband.” 

Perceiving the futility of arguing with her, the officer was 
about to give orders to remove her forcibly from the doomed 
man’s arms when Laurent, who until then had maintained an 
impassive silence, ventured to interfere. 

“ See here. Captain, I am the man who killed so many of 
your men ; go ahead and shoot me — that will be all right, es- 
pecially as I have neither chick nor child in all the world. 
But this gentleman’s case is different ; he is a married man, 
don’t you see. Come, now, let him go ; then you can settle 
my business as soon as you choose.” 

Beside himself with anger, the captain screamed : 

“ What is all this lingo ? Are you trying to make game of 
me ? Come, step out here, some one of you fellows, and take 
away this woman ! ” 

He had to repeat his order in German, whereon a soldier 
came forward from the ranks, a short stocky Bavarian, with an 
enormous head surrounded by a bristling forest of red hair 
and beard, beneath which all that was to be seen were a pair of 
big blue eyes and a massive nose. He was besmeared with 
blood, a hideous spectacle, like nothing so much as some 
fierce, hairy denizen of the woods, emerging from his cavern and 


262 


THE DOWNFALL 


licking his chops, still red with the gore of the victims whose 
bones he has been crunching. 

With a heart-rending cry Henriette repeated : 

“ Give me my husband, or let me die with him.” 

This seemed to cause the cup of the officer’s exasperation 
to overrun ; he thumped himself violently on the chest, de- 
claring that he was no executioner, that he would rather die 
than harm a hair of an innocent head. There was nothing 
against her; he would cut off his right hand rather than do her 
an injury. And then he repeated his order that she be taken 
away. 

As the Bavarian came up to carry out his instructions Hen- 
riette tightened her clasp on Weiss’s neck, throwing all her 
strength into her frantic embrace. 

“ Oh, my love ! Keep me with you, I beseech you ; let me 
die with you ” 

Big tears were rolling down his cheeks as, without answer- 
ing, he endeavored to loosen the convulsive clasp of the fin- 
gers of the poor creature he loved so dearly. 

“You love me no longer, then, that you wish to die without 
me. Hold me, keep me, do not let them take me. They will 
weary at last, and will kill us together.” 

He had loosened one of the little hands, and carried it to 
his lips and kissed it, working all the while to make the other 
release its hold. 

“ No, no, it shall not be ! I will not leave thy bosom ; they 
shall pierce my heart before reaching thine. I will not sur- 
vive ” 

But at last, after a long struggle, he held both the hands in 
his. Then he broke the silence that he had maintained until 
then, uttering one single word : 

“ Farewell, dear wife.” 

And with his own hands he placed her in the arms of the 
Bavarian, who carried her away. She shrieked and struggled, 
while the soldier, probably with intent to soothe Her, kept 
pouring in her ear an uninterrupted stream of words in un- 
melodious German. And, having freed her head, looking 
over the shoulder of the man, she beheld the end. 

It lasted not five seconds. Weiss, whose eye-glass had 
slipped from its position in the agitation of their parting, 
quickly replaced it upon his nose, as if desirous to look death 
in the face. He stepped back and placed himself against the 
wall, and the face of the self-contained, strong young man, as 


THE DOWNFALL 


263 


he stood there in his tattered coat, was sublimely beautiful in 
its expression of tranquil courage. Laurent, who stood beside 
him, had thrust his hands deep down into his pockets. The 
cold cruelty of the proceeding disgusted him ; it seemed to 
him that they could not be far removed from savagery who 
could thus slaughter men before the eyes of their wives. 
He drew himself up, looked them square in the face, and in a 
tone of deepest contempt expectorated : 

“ Dirty pigs ! ” 

The officer raised his sword ; the signal was succeeded by 
a crashing volley, and the two men sank to the ground, an 
inert mass, the gardener’s lad upon his face, the other, the 
accountant, upon his side, lengthwise of the wall. The frame 
of the latter, before he expired, contracted in a supreme con- 
vulsion, the eyelids quivered, the mouth opened as if he was 
about to speak. The officer came up and stirred him with his 
foot, to make sure that he was really dead. 

Henriette had seen the whole : the fading eyes that sought 
her in death, the last struggle of the strong man in agony, the 
brutal boot spurning the corpse. And while the Bavarian 
still held her in his arms, conveying her further and further 
from the object of her love, she uttered no cry ; she set her 
teeth, in silent fury, into what was nearest : a human hand, it 
chanced to be. The soldier gave vent to a howl of anguish 
and dashed her to the ground ; raising his uninjured fist above 
her head he was on the point of braining her. And for a 
moment their faces were in contact ; she experienced a feeling 
of intensest loathing for the monster, and that blood-stained 
hair and beard, those blue eyes, dilated and brimming with 
hate and rage, were destined to remain forever indelibly im- 
printed on her memory. 

In after days Henriette could never account distinctly to 
herself for the time immediately succeeding these events. 
She had but one desire : to return to the spot where her loved 
one had died, take possession of his remains, and watch and 
weep over them ; but, as in an evil dream, obstacles of every 
sort arose before her and barred the way. First a heavy 
infantry fire broke out afresh, and there was great activity 
among the German troops who were holding Bazeilles ; it was 
due to the arrival of the infanterie de marine and other regi- 
ments that had been despatched from Balan to regain posses- 
sion of the village, and the battle commenced to rage again 
with the utmost fury. The young woman, in company with a 


264 


THE DOWNFALL 


band of terrified citizens, was swept away to the left into a 
dark alley. The result of the conflict could not remain long 
doubtful, however ; it was too late to reconquer the aban- 
doned positions. For near half an hour the infantry strug- 
gled against superior numbers and faced death with splendid 
bravery, but the enemy’s strength was constantly increasing, 
their re-enforcements were pouring in from every direction, 
the roads, the meadows, the park of Montivilliers ; no force at 
our command could have dislodged them from the position, 
so dearly bought, where they had left thousands of their 
bravest. Destruction and devastation now had done their 
work ; the place was a shambles, disgraceful to humanity, 
where mangled forms lay scattered among smoking ruins, and 
poor Bazeilles, having drained the bitter cup, went up at last 
in smoke and flame. 

Henriette turned and gave one last look at her little house, 
whose floors fell in even as she gazed, sending myriads of lit- 
tle sparks whirling gayly upward on the air. And there, be- 
fore her, prone at the wall’s foot, she saw her husband’s corpse, 
and in her despair and grief would fain have returned to him, 
but just then another crowd came up and surged around her, 
the bugles were sounding the signal to retire, she was borne 
away, she knew not how, among the retreating troops. Her 
faculty of self-guidance left her ; she was as a bit of flotsam 
swept onward by the eddying human tide that streamed along 
the way. And that was all she could remember until she be- 
came herself again and found she was at Balan, among 
strangers, her head reclined upon a table in a kitchen, weeping. 

V. 

I T was nearly ten o’clock up on the Plateau de I’Al- 
gerie, and still the men of Beaudoin’s company were rest- 
ing supine, among the cabbages, in the field whence they had 
not budged since early morning. The cross fire from the bat- 
teries on Hattoy and the peninsula of Iges was hotter than ever ; 
it had just killed two more of their number, and there were no 
orders for them to advance. Were they to stay there and be 
shelled all day, without a chance to see anything of the fighting? 

They were even denied the relief of discharging their chasse- 
pots. Captain Beaudoin had at last put his foot down and 
stopped the firing, that senseless fusillade- against the little 


THE DO WNFALL 265 

wood in front of them, which seemed entirely deserted by the 
Prussians. The heat was stifling; it seemed to them that they 
should roast, stretched there on the ground under the blazing 
sky. 

Jean was alarmed, on turning to look at Maurice, to see that 
he had declined his head and was lying, with closed eyes, 
apparently inanimate, his cheek against the bare earth. He 
was very pale, there was no sign of life in his face. 

“Hallo there! what’s the matter?’’ 

But Maurice was only sleeping. The mental strain, con- 
jointly with his fatigue, had been too much for him, in spite of 
the dangers that menaced them at every moment. He awoke 
with a start and stared about him, and the peace that slumber 
had left in his wide-dilated eyes was immediately supplanted by 
a look of startled affright as it dawned on him where he was. 
He had not the remotest idea how long he had slept ; all he 
knew was that the state from which he had been recalled to the 
horrors of the battlefield was one of blessed oblivion and 
tranquillity. 

“Hallo! that’s funny; I must have been asleep!’’ he mur- 
mured. “Ah! it has done me good.’’ 

It was true that he suffered less from that pressure about his 
temples and at his heart, that horrible constriction that seems 
as if it would crush one’s bones. He chaffed Lapoulle, who 
had manifested much uneasiness since the disappearance of 
Chouteau and Loubet and spoke of going to look for them. 
A capital idea! so he might get away and hide behind a tree, 
and smoke a pipe! Pache thought that the surgeons had 
detained them at the ambulance, where there was a scarcity of 
sick-bearers. That was a job that he had no great fancy for, 
to go around under fire and collect the wounded ! And 
haunted by a lingering superstition of the country where he 
was born, he added that it was unlucky to touch a corpse ; it 
brought death. 

“Shut up, confound you!’’ roared Lieutenant Rochas. 
“Who is going to die?’’ 

Colonel de Vineuil, sitting his tall horse, turned his head and 
gave a smile, the first that had been seen on his face that 
morning. Then he resumed his statue-like attitude, waiting 
for orders as impassively as ever under the tumbling shells. 

Maurice’s attention was attracted to the sick-bearers, whose 
movements he watched with interest as they searched for 
wounded men among the depressions of the ground. At the 


266 


THE DOWNFALL 


end of a sunken road, and protected by a low ridge not far from 
their position, a flying ambulance of first aid had been estab- 
lished, and its emissaries had begun to explore the plateau. 
A tent was quickly erected, while from the hospital van the 
attendants extracted the necessary supplies; compresses, 
bandages, linen, and the few indispensable instruments re- 
quired for the hasty dressings they gave before dispatching 
the patients to Sedan, which they did as rapidly as they could 
secure wagons, the supply of which was limited. There was 
an assistant surgeon in charge, with two subordinates of infe- 
rior rank under him. In all the army none showed more 
gallantry and received less acknowledgment than the litter- 
bearers. They could be seen all over the field in their gray 
uniform, with the distinctive red badge on their cap and on 
their arm, courageously risking their lives and unhurriedly 
pushing forward through the thickest of the fire to the spots 
where men had been seen to fall. At times they would creep 
on hands and knees ; would always take advantage of a hedge 
or ditch, or any shelter that was afforded by the conformation 
of the ground, never exposing themselves unnecessarily out of 
bravado. When at last they reached the fallen men their 
painful task commenced, which was made more difficult and 
protracted by the fact that many of the subjects had fainted, 
and it was hard to tell whether they were alive or dead. 
Some lay face downward with their mouths in a pool of blood, 
in danger of suffocating, others had bitten the ground until 
their throats were choked with dry earth, others, where a shell 
had fallen among a group, were a confused, intertwined heap 
of mangled limbs and crushed trunks. With infinite care and 
patience the bearers would go through the tangled mass, sepa- 
rating the living from the dead, arranging their limbs and rais- 
ing the head to give them air, cleansing the face as well as 
they could with the means at their command. Each of them 
carried a bucket of cool water, which he had to use very sav- 
ingly. And Maurice could see them thus engaged, often for 
minutes at a time, kneeling by some man whom they were try- 
ing to resuscitate, waiting for him to show some sign of life. 

He watched one of them, some fifty yards away to the left, 
working over the wound of a little soldier from the sleeve of 
whose tunic a thin stream of blood was trickling, drop by drop. 
The man of the red cross discovered the source of the hemor- 
rhage and finally checked it by compressing the artery. In 
urgent cases, like that of the little soldier, they rendered these 


THE DOWNFALL 


267 


partial attentions, locating fractures, bandaging and immobil- 
izing the limbs so as to reduce the danger of transportation. 
And the transportation, even, was an affair that called for a 
great deal of judgment and ingenuity; they assisted those who 
could walk, and carried others, either in their arms, like little 
children, or pickaback when the nature of the hurt allowed it; 
at other times they united in groups of two, three, or four, 
according to the requirements of the case, and made a chair by 
joining their hands, or carried the patient off by his legs and 
shoulders in a recumbent posture. In addition to the stretchers 
provided by the medical department there were all sorts of 
temporary makeshifts, such as the stretchers improvised from 
knapsack straps and a couple of muskets. And in every direc- 
tion on the unsheltered, shell-swept plain they could be seen, 
singly or in groups, hastening with their dismal loads to the 
rear, their heads bowed and picking their steps, an admirable 
spectacle of prudent heroism. 

Maurice saw a pair on his right, a thin, puny little fellow 
lugging a burly sergeant, with both legs broken, suspended 
from his neck ; the sight reminded the young man of an ant 
toiling under a burden many times larger than itself ; and even 
as he watched them a shell burst directly in their path and they 
were lost to view. When the smoke cleared away the sergeant 
was seen lying on his back, having received no further injury, 
while the bearer lay beside him, disemboweled. And another 
came up, another toiling ant, who, when he had turned his 
dead comrade on his back and examined him, took the ser- 
geant up and made off with his load. 

It gave Maurice a chance to read Lapoulle a lesson. 

“I say, if you like the business, why don’t you go and give 
that man a lift!” 

For some little time the batteries at Saint- Menges had been 
thundering as if determined to surpass all previous efforts, and 
Captain Beaudoin, who was still tramping nervously up and 
down before his company line, at last stepped up to the colo- 
nel. It was a pity, he said, to waste the men’s morale in that 
way and keep their minds on the stretch for hours and hours. 

“I can’t help it; I have no orders,” the colonel stoically 
replied. 

They had another glimpse of General Douay as he flew by at 
a gallop, followed by his staff. He had just had an interview 
with General de Wimpffen, who had ridden up to entreat him 
to hold his ground, which he thought he could promise to do, 


268 


THE DOWNFALL 


but only so long as the Calvary of Illy, on his right, held out; 
Illy once taken, he would be responsible for nothing; their 
defeat would be inevitable. General de Wimpffen averred 
that the ist corps would look out for the position at Illy, and 
indeed a regiment of zouaves was presently seen to occupy the 
Calvary, so that General Douay, his anxiety being relieved on 
that score, sent Dumont’s division to the assistance of the 12th 
corps, which was then being hard pushed. Scarcely fifteen 
minutes later, however, as he was returning from the left, 
whither he had ridden to see how affairs were looking, he was 
surprised, raising his eyes to the Calvary, to see it was unoccu- 
pied; there was not a zouave to be seen there, they had aban- 
doned the plateau that was no longer tenable by reason of the 
terrific fire from the batteries at Fleigneux. With a despairing 
presentiment of impending disaster he was spurring as fast as 
he could to the right, when he encountered Dumont’s division, 
flying in disorder, broken and tangled in inextricable confu- 
sion with the debris of the ist corps. The latter, which, after 
its retrograde movement, had never been able to regain posses- 
sion of the posts it had occupied in the morning, leaving 
Daigny in the hands of the Xllth Saxon corps and Givonne to 
the Prussian Guards, had been compelled to retreat in a north- 
erly direction across the wood of Garenne, harassed by the 
batteries that the enemy had posted on every summit from one 
end of the valley to the other. The terrible circle of fire and 
flame was contracting; a portion of the Guards had continued 
their march on Illy, moving from east to west and turning the 
eminences, while from west to east, in the rear of the Xlth 
corps, now masters of Saint- Menges, the Vth, moving steadily 
onward, had passed Fleigneux and with insolent temerity was 
constantly pushing its batteries more and more to the front, 
and so contemptuous were they of the ignorance and impo- 
tence of the French that they did not even wait for the infan- 
try to come up to support their guns. It was midday ; the 
entire horizon was aflame, concentrating its destructive fire on 
the 7th and ist corps. 

Then General Douay, while the German artillery was thus 
preparing the way for the decisive movement that should make 
them masters of the Calvary, resolved to make one last desper- 
ate attempt to regain possession of the hill. He dispatched 
his orders, and throwing himself in person among the fugitives 
of Dumont’s division, succeeded in forming a column which 
he sent forward to the plateau. It held its ground for a few 


THE DOWNFALL 


269 


minutes, but the bullets whistled so thick, the naked, treeless 
fields were swept by such a tornado of shot and shell, that it 
was not long before the panic broke out afresh, sweeping the 
men adown the slopes, rolling them up as straws are whirled 
before the wind. And the general, unwilling to abandon his 
project, ordered up other regiments. 

A staff officer galloped by, shouting to Colonel de Vineuil 
as he passed an order that was lost in the universal uproar. 
Hearing, the colonel was erect in his stirrups in an instant, his 
face aglow with the gladness of battle, and pointing to the 
Calvary with a grand movement of his sword; 

‘ ‘Our turn has come at last, boys! ” he shouted. “Forward ! “ 

A thrill of enthusiasm ran through the ranks at the brief 
address, and the regiment put itself in motion. Beaudoin’s 
company was among the first to get on its feet, which it did to 
the accompaniment of much good-natured chaff, the men 
declaring they were so rusty they could not move ; the gravel 
must have penetrated their joints. The fire was so hot, how- 
ever, that by the time they had advanced a few feet they were 
glad to avail themselves of the protection of a shelter trench 
that lay in their path, along which they crept in an undignified 
posture, bent almost double. 

“Now, young fellow, lookout for yourself!’’ Jean said to 
Maurice; “we’re in for it. Don’t let ’em see so much as the 
end of your nose, for if you do they will surely snip it off, and 
keep a sharp lookout for your legs and arms unless you have 
more than you care to keep. Those who come out of this with 
a whole skin will be lucky.’’ 

Maurice did not hear him very distinctly; the words were 
lost in the all-pervading clamor that buzzed and hummed in 
the young man’s ears. He could not have told now whether 
he was afraid or not; he went forward because the others did, 
borne along with them in their headlong rush, without distinct 
volition of his own ; his sole desire was to have the affair ended 
as soon as possible. So true was it that he was a mere drop in 
the on-pouring torrent that when the leading files came to the 
end of the trench and began to waver at the prospect of climb- 
ing the exposed slope that lay before them, he immediately felt 
himself seized by a sensation of panic, and was ready to turn 
and fly. It was simply an uncontrollable instinct, a revolt of 
the muscles, obedient to every passing breath. 

Some of the men had already faced about when the colonel 
came hurrying up. 


270 


THE DOWNFALL 


“Steady there, my children. You won’t cause me this great 
sorrow; you won’t behave like cowards. Remember, the 
io6th has never turned its back upon the enemy; will you be 
the first to disgrace our flag?’’ 

And he spurred his charger across the path of the fugitives, 
addressing them individually, speaking to them of their coun- 
try, in a voice that trembled with emotion. 

Lieutenant Rochas was so moved by his words that he gave 
way to an ungovernable fit of anger, raising his sword and 
belaboring the men with the flat as if it had been a club. 

“You dirty loafers. I’ll see whether you will go up there or 
not! I’ll kick you up! About face! and I’ll break the jaw 
of the first man that refuses to obey!’’ 

But such an extreme measure as kicking a regiment into 
action was repugnant to the colonel. 

“No, no, lieutenant; they will follow me. Won’t you, my 
children? You won’t let your old colonel fight it out alone 
with the Prussians! Up there lies the way; forward!’’ 

He turned his horse and left the trench, and they did all fol- 
low, to a man, for he would have been considered the lowest of 
the low who could have abandoned their leader after that 
brave, kind speech. He was the only one, however, who, 
while crossing the open fields, erect on his tall horse, was cool 
and unconcerned; the men scattered, advancing in open order 
and availing themselves of every shelter afforded by the ground. 
The land sloped upward ; there were fully five hundred yards 
of stubble and beet fields between them and the Calvary, and 
in place of the correctly aligned columns that the spectator sees 
advancing when a charge is ordered in field maneuvers, all that 
was to be seen was a loose array of men with rounded backs, 
singly or in small groups, hugging the ground, now crawling 
warily a little way on hands and knees, now dashing forward 
for the next cover, like huge insects ughting their way upward 
to the crest by dint of agility and address. The enemy’s bat- 
teries seemed to have become aware of the movement; their 
fire was so rapid that the reports of the guns were blended in 
one continuous roar. Five men were killed, a lieutenant was 
cut in two. 

Maurice and Jean had considered themselves fortunate that 
their way led along a hedge behind which they could push for- 
ward unseen, but the man immediately in front of them was 
shot through the temples and fell back dead in their arms ; 
they had to cast him down at one side. By this time, however, 


THE DO WNFALL 


271 


the casualties had ceased to excite attention; they were too 
numerous. A man went by, uttering frightful shrieks and 
pressing his hands upon his protruding entrails; they beheld a 
horse dragging himself along with both thighs broken, and 
these anguishing sights, these horrors of the battlefield, affected 
them no longer. They were suffering from the intolerable 
heat, the noonday sun that beat upon their backs and burned 
like hot coals. 

“How thirsty I am!” Maurice murmured. “My throat is 
like an ash barrel. Don’t you notice that smell of something 
scorching, a smell like burning woolen?” 

Jean nodded. “It was just the same at Solferino; perhaps 
it is the smell that always goes with war. But hold, I have a 
little brandy left; we’ll have a sup.” 

And they paused behind the hedge a moment and raised the 
flask to their lips, but the brandy, instead of relieving their 
thirst, burned their stomach. It irritated them, that nasty 
taste of burnt rags in their mouths. Moreover they perceived 
that their strength was commencing to fail for want of suste- 
nance and would have liked to take a bite from the half loaf 
that Maurice had in his knapsack, but it would not do to stop 
and breakfast there under fire, and then they had to keep up 
with their comrades. There was a steady stream of men com- 
ing up behind them along the hedge who pressed them forward, 
and so, doggedly bending their backs to the task before them, 
they resumed their course. Presently they made their final 
rush and reached the crest. They were on the plateau, at the 
very foot of the Calvary, the old weather-beaten cross that 
stood between two stunted lindens. 

“Good for our side!” exclaimed Jean; “here we are! But 
the next thing is to remain here ! ’ ’ 

He was right ; it was not the pleasantest place in the world 
to be in, as Lapoulle remarked in a doleful tone that excited 
the laughter of the company. They all lay down again, in a 
field of stubble, and for all that three men were killed in quick 
successiori. It was pandemonium let loose up there on the 
heights; the projectiles from Saint-Menges, Fleigneux, and 
Givonne fell in such numbers that the ground fairly seemed to 
smoke, as it does at times under a heavy shower of rain. It 
was clear that the position could not be maintained unless 
artillery was dispatched at once to the support of the troops 
who had been sent on such a hopeless undertaking. General 
Douay, it was said, had given instructions to bring up two bat- 


272 


THE DOWNFALL 


teries of the reserve artillery, and the men were every moment 
turning their heads, watching anxiously for the guns that did 
not come. 

“It is absurd, ridiculous!” declared Beaudoin, who was 
again fidgeting up and down before the company. “Who ever 
heard of placing a regiment in the air like this and giving it no 
support!” Then, observing a slight depression on their left, 
he turned to Rochas: “Don’t you think. Lieutenant, that the 
company would be safer there?” 

Rochas stood stock still and shrugged his shoulders. “It 
is six of one and half a dozen of the other. Captain. My opin- 
ion is that we will do better to stay where we are.” 

Then the captain, whose principles were opposed to swear- 
ing, forgot himself. 

“But, good God! there won’t a man of us escape! We 
can’t allow the men to be murdered like this!” 

And he determined to investigate for himself the advantages 
of the position he had mentioned, but had scarcely taken ten 
steps when he was lost to sight in the smoke of an exploding 
shell; a splinter of the projectile had fractured his right leg. 
He fell upon his back, emitting a shrill cry of alarm, like a 
woman’s. 

“He might have known as much,” Rochas muttered. 
“There’s no use his making such a fuss over it; when the dose 
is fixed for one, he has to take it.” 

Some members of the company had risen to their feet on see- 
ing their captain fall, and as he continued to call lustily for 
assistance, Jean finally ran to him, immediately followed by 
Maurice. 

“Friends, friends, for Heaven’s sake do not leave me here; 
carry me to the ambulance!” 

"'Dame,, Captain, I don’t know that we shall be able to get so 
far, but we can try.” 

As they were discussing how they could best take hold to 
raise him they perceived, behind the hedge that had. sheltered 
them on their way up, two stretcher-bearers who seemed to be 
waiting for something to do, and finally, after protracted sig- 
naling, induced them to draw near. All would be well if they 
could only get the wounded man to the ambulance without 
accident, but the way was long and the iron hail more pitiless 
than ever. 

The bearers had tightly bandaged the injured limb in order 
to keep the bones in position and were about to bear the cap- 


THE DOWNFALL 


273 


tain off the field on what children call a “chair,” formed by- 
joining their hands and slipping an arm of the patient over each 
of their necks, when Colonel de Vineuil, who had heard of the 
accident, came up, spurring his horse. He manifested much 
emotion, for he had known the young man ever since his 
graduation from Saint-Cyr. 

“Cheer up, my poor boy; have courage. You are in no 
danger; the doctors will save your leg.” 

The captain’s face wore an expression of resignation, as if 
he had summoned up all his courage to bear his misfortune 
manfully. 

“No, my dear Colonel; I feel it is all up with me, and I 
would rather have it so. The only thing that distresses me is 
the waiting for the inevitable end. ’ ’ 

The bearers carried him away, and were fortunate enough to 
reach the hedge in safety, behind which they trotted swiftly 
away with their burden. The colonel’s eyes followed them 
anxiously, and when he saw them reach the clump of trees 
where the ambulance was stationed a look of deep relief rose 
to his face. 

“But you. Colonel,” Maurice suddenly exclaimed, “you are 
wounded too! ” 

He had perceived blood dripping from the colonel’s left 
boot. A projectile of some description had carried away the 
heel of the foot-covering and forced the steel shank into the 
flesh. 

M. de Vineuil bent over his saddle and glanced unconcern- 
edly at the member, in which the sensation at that time must 
have been far from pleasurable. 

“Yes, yes,” he replied, “it is a little remembrance that I 
received a while ago. A mere scratch, that don’t prevent me 

from sitting my horse ” And he added, as he turned to 

resume his position to the rear of his regiment: “As long as a 
man can stick on his horse he’s all right.” 

At last the two batteries of reserve artillery came up. Their 
arrival was an immense relief to the anxiously expectant men, 
as if the guns were to be a rampart of protection to them and 
at the same time demolish the hostile batteries that were thun- 
dering against them from every side. And then, too, it was in 
itself an exhilarating spectacle to see the magnificent order they 
preserved as they came dashing up, each gun followed by its 
caisson, the drivers seated on the near horse and holding the 
off horse by the bridle, the cannoneers bolt upright on the 


274 


THE DOWNFALL 


chests, the chiefs of detachment riding in their proper position 
on the flank. Distances were preserved as accurately as if they 
were on parade, and all the time they were tearing across the 
fields at headlong speed, with the roar and crash of a hurricane. 

Maurice, who had lain down again, arose and said to Jean 
in great excitement: 

“Look! over there on the left, that is Honore’s battery. I 
can recognize the men.“ 

Jean gave him a back-handed blow that brought him down 
to his recumbent position. 

“Lie down, will you! and make believe dead!’’ 

But they were both deeply interested in watching the maneu- 
vers of the battery, and never once removed their eyes from it; 
it cheered their heart to witness the cool and intrepid activity 
of those men, who, they hoped, might yet bring victory to them. 

The battery had wheeled into position on a bare summit to 
the left, where it brought up all standing; then, quick as a 
flash, the cannoneers leaped from the chests and unhooked the 
limbers, and the drivers, leaving the gun in position, drove 
fifteen yards to the rear, where they wheeled again so as to 
bring team and limber face to the enemy and there remained, 
motionless as statues. In less time than it takes to tell it the 
guns were in place, with the proper intervals between them, 
distributed into three sections of two guns each, each section 
commanded by a lieutenant, and over the whole a captain, a 
long maypole of a man, who made a terribly conspicuous land- 
mark on the plateau. And this captain, having first made a 
brief calculation, was heard to shout: 

“Sight for sixteen hundred yards!’’ 

Their fire was to be directed upon a Prussian battery, 
screened by some bushes, to the left of Fleigneux, the shells 
from which were rendering the position of the Calvary unten- 
able. 

“Honor^’s piece, you see,’’ Maurice began again,* whose 
excitement was such that he could not keep still, “Honore’s 
piece is in the center section. There he is now, bending over 
to speak to the gunner; you remember Louis, the gunner, 
don’t you? the little fellow with whom we had a drink at 
Vouziers? And that fellow in the rear, who sits so straight on 
his handsome chestnut, is Adolphe, the driver ” 

First came the gun with its chief and six cannoneers, then 
the limber with its four horses ridden by two men, .beyond that 
the caisson with its six horses and three drivers, still further to 


THE DOWNFALL 


275 


the rear were the prolo/ige, forge, and battery wagon ; and this 
array of men, horses and uiateriel extended to the rear in a 
straight unbroken line of more than a hundred yards in length; 
to say nothing of the spare caisson and the men and beasts who 
were to fill the places of those removed by casualties, who were 
stationed at one side, as much as possible out of the enemy's 
line of fire. 

And now Honore was attending to the loading of his gun. 
The two men whose duty it was to fetch the cartridge and the 
projectile returned from the caisson, where the corporal and 
the artificer were stationed; two other cannoneers, standing at 
the muzzle of the piece, slipped into the bore the cartridge, a 
charge of powder in an envelope of serge, and gently drove it 
home with the rammer, then in like manner introduced the 
shell, the studs of which creaked faintly in the spirals of the 
rifling. When the primer was inserted in the vent and all was 
in readiness, Honore thought he would like to point the gun 
himself for the first shot, and throwing himself in a semi- 
recumbent posture on the trail, working with one hand the 
screw that regulated the elevation, with the other he signaled 
continuously to the gunner, who, standing behind him, moved 
the piece by imperceptible degrees to right or left with the 
assistance of the lever. 

“That ought to be about right,” he said as he arose. 

The captain came up, and stooping until his long body was 
bent almost double, verified the elevation. At each gun stood 
the assistant gunner, waiting to pull the lanyard that should 
ignite the fulminate by means of a serrated wire. And the 
orders were given in succession, deliberately, by number: 

“Number one. Fire! Number two. Fire!” 

Six reports were heard, the guns recoiled, and while they 
were being brought back to position the chiefs of detachment 
observed the effect of the shots and found that the range was 
short. They made the necessary correction and the evolution 
was repeated, in exactly the same manner as before; and it was 
that cool precision, that mechanical routine of duty, without 
agitation and without haste, that did so much to maintain the 
moi'ale of the men. They were a little family, united by the 
tie of a common occupation, grouped around the gun, which 
they loved and reverenced as if it had been a living thing; it 
was the object of all their care and attention, to it all else was 
subservient,, men, horses, caisson, everything. Thence also 
arose the spirit of unity and cohesion that animated the battery 


276 


THE DOWNFALL 


at large, making all its members work together for the common 
glory and the common good, like a well-regulated household. 

The io6th had cheered lustily at the completion of the first 
round; they were going to make those bloody Prussian guns 
shut their mouths at last! but their elation was succeeded by 
dismay when it was seen that the projectiles fell short, many of 
them bursting in the air and never reaching the bushes that 
served to mask the enemy’s artillery. 

“Honore,” Maurice continued, “says that all the other 
pieces are popguns and that his old girl is the only one that is 
good for anything. Ah, his old girl ! He talks as if she were 
his wife and there were not another like her in the world! 
Just notice how jealously he watches her and makes the men 
clean her off ! I suppose he is afraid she will overheat herself 
and take cold!” 

He continued rattling on in this pleasant vein to Jean, both 
of them cheered and encouraged by the cool bravery with which 
the artillerymen served their guns; but the Prussian batteries, 
after firing three founds, had now got the range, which, too 
long at the beginning, they had at last ciphered down to such a 
fine point that their shells were landed invariably among the 
French pieces, while the latter, notwithstanding the efforts that 
were made to increase their range, still continued to place their 
projectiles short of the enemy’s position. One of Honore’s 
cannoneers was killed while loading the piece; the others pushed 
the body out of their way, and the service went on with the 
same methodical precision, with neither more nor less haste. In 
the midst of the projectiles that fell and burst continually the 
same unvarying rhythmical movements went on uninterruptedly 
about the gun; the cartridge and shell were introduced, the gun 
was pointed, the lanyard pulled, the carriage brought back to 
place; and all with such undeviating regularity that the men 
might have been taken for automatons, devoid of sight and 
hearing. 

What impressed Maurice, however, more than anything else, 
was the attitude of the drivers, sitting straight and stiff in their 
saddles fifteen yards to the rear, face to the enemy. There was 
Adolphe, the broad-chested, with his big blond mustache 
across his rubicund face; and who shall tell the amount of 
courage a man must have to enable him to sit without winking 
and watch the shells coming toward him, and he not allowed 
even to twirl his thumbs by way of diversion! The men who 
served the guns had something to occupy their minds, while the 


THE DOWNFALL 


277 


drivers, condemned to immobility, had death constantly before 
their eyes, and plenty of leisure to speculate on probabilities. 
They were made to face the battlefield because, had they 
turned their backs to it, the coward that so often lurks at the 
bottom of man’s nature might have got the better of them and 
swept away man and beast. It is the unseen danger that makes 
dastards of us; that which we can see we brave. The army 
has no more gallant set of men in its ranks than the drivers in 
their obscure position. 

Another man had been killed, two horses of a caisson had 
been disemboweled, and the enemy kept up such a murderous 
fire that there was a prospect of the entire battery being 
knocked to pieces should they persist in holding that position 
longer. It was time to take some step to baffle that tremen- 
dous fire, notwithstanding the danger there was in moving, and 
the captain unhesitatingly gave orders to bring up the limbers. 

The risky maneuver was executed with lightning speed; the 
drivers came up at a gallop, wheeled their limber into position 
in rear of the gun, when the cannoneers raised the trail of the 
piece and hooked on. The movement, however, collecting as 
it did, momentarily, men and horses on the battery front in 
something of a huddle, created a certain degree of confusion, 
of which the enemy took advantage by increasing the rapidity 
of their fire; three more men dropped. The teams darted 
away at breakneck speed, describing an arc of a circle among 
the fields, and the battery took up its new position some fifty 
or sixty yards more to the right, on a gentle eminence that was 
situated on the other flank of the io6th. The pieces were 
unlimbered, the drivers resumed their station at the rear, face 
to the enemy, and the firing was reopened; and so little time 
was lost between leaving their old post and taking up the new 
that the earth had barely ceased to tremble under the concus- 
sion. 

Maurice uttered a cry of dismay, when, after three attempts, 
the Prussians had again got their range; the first shell landed 
squarely on Honore’s gun. The artilleryman rushed forward, 
and with a trembling hand felt to ascertain what damage had 
been done his pet; a great wedge had been chipped from the 
bronze muzzle. But it was not disabled, and the work went 
on as before, after they had removed from beneath the wheels 
the body of another cannoneer, with whose blood the entire 
carriage was besplashed. 

“It was not little Louis; I am glad of that/*’ said Maurice, 


278 


THE DOWNFALL 


continuing to think aloud. “There he is now, pointing his 
gun; he must be wounded, though, for he is only using his left 
arm. Ah, he is a brave lad, is little Louis; and how well he 
and Adolphe get on together, in spite of their little tiffs, only 
provided the gunner, the man who serves on foot, shows a 
proper amount of respect for the driver, the man who rides a 
horse, notwithstanding that the latter is by far the more igno- 
rant of the two. Now that they are under fire, though, Louis 
is as good a man as Adolphe “ 

Jean, who had been watching events in silence, gave utter- 
ance to a distressful cry : 

“They will have to give it up! No troops in the world 
could stand such a fire.” 

Within the space of five minutes the second position had 
become as untenable as was the first; the projectiles kept fall- 
ing with the same persistency, the -same deadly precision. A 
shell dismounted a gun, fracturing the chase, killing a lieuten- 
ant and two men. Not one of the enemy’s shots failed to 
reach, and at each discharge they secured a still greater accu- 
racy of range, so that if the battery should remain there another 
five minutes they would not have a gun or a man left. The 
crushing fire threatened to wipe them all out of existence. 

Again the captain’s ringing voice was heard ordering up the 
limbers. The drivers dashed up at a gallop and wheeled their 
teams into place to allow the cannoneers to hook on the guns, 
but before Adolphe had time to get up Louis was struck by a 
fragment of shell that tore open his throat and broke his jaw; 
he fell across the trail of the carriage just as he was on the 
point of raising it. Adolphe was there instantly, and behold- 
ing his prostrate comrade weltering in his blood, jumped from 
his horse and was about to raise him to his saddle and bear him 
away. And at that moment, just as the battery was exposed 
flank to the enemy in the act of wheeling, offering a fair target, 
a crashing discharge came, and Adolphe reeled and fell to the 
ground, his chest crushed in, with arms wide extended. In his 
supreme convulsion he seized his comrade about the body, an4 
thus they lay, locked in each other’s arms in a last embrace, 
“married” even in death. 

Notwithstanding the slaughtered horses and the confusion 
that that death-dealing discharge had caused among the men, 
the battery had rattled up the slope of a hillock and taken post 
a few yards from the spot where Jean and Maurice were lying. 
For the third time the guns w^re unlimbered, the drivers retired 


THE DOWNFALL 


279 


to the rear and faced the enemy, and the cannoneers, with 
a gallantry that nothing could daunt, at once reopened 
fire. 

“It is as if the end of all things were at hand!” said Mau- 
rice, the sound of whose voice was lost in the uproar. 

It seemed indeed as if heaven and earth were confounded 
in that hideous din. Great rocks were cleft asunder, the sun 
was hid from sight at times in clouds of sulphurous vapor. 
When the cataclysm was at its height the horses stood with 
drooping heads, trembling, dazed with terror. The captain’s 
tall form was everywhere upon the eminence; suddenly he was 
seen no more; a shell had cut him clean in two, and he sank, 
as a ship's mast that is snapped off at the base. 

But it was about Honore’s gun, even more than the others, 
that the conflict raged, with cool efficiency and obstinate 
determination. The non-commissioned officer found it neces- 
sary to forget his chevrons for the time being and lend a hand 
in working the piece, for he had now but three cannoneers left; 
he pointed the gun and pulled the lanyard, while the others 
brought ammunition from the caisson, loaded, and handled the 
rammer and the sponge. He had sent for men and horses from 
the battery reserves that were kept to supply the places of those 
removed by casualties, but they were slow in coming, and in 
the meantime the survivors must do the work of the dead. It 
was a great discouragement to all that their projectiles ranged 
short and burst almost without exception in the air, inflicting 
no injury on the powerful batteries of the foe, the fire of which 
was so efficient. And suddenly Honore let slip an oath that 
was heard above the thunder of the battle; ill-luck, ill-luck, 
nothing but ill-luck! the right wheel of his piece was smashed! 
Tonnerre de Dieu ! what a state she was in, the poor darling! 
stretched on her side with a broken paw, her nose buried in the 
ground, crippled and good for nothing ! The sight brought big 
tears to his eyes, he laid his trembling hand upon the breech, 
as if the ardor of his love might avail to warm his dear mistress 
back to life. And the best gun of them all, the only one that 
had been able to drop a few shells among the enemy ! Then 
suddenly he conceived a daring project, nothing less than to 
repair the injury there and then, under that terrible fire. As- 
sisted by one of his men he ran back to the caisson and secured 
the spare wheel that was attached to the rear axle, and then 
commenced the most dangerous operation that can be executed 
on a battlefield. Fortunately the extra men and horses that 


280 


THE DOWNFALL 


he had sent for came up just then, and he had two cannoneers 
to lend him a hand. 

For the third time, however, the strength of the battery was 
so reduced as practically to disable it. To push their heroic 
daring further would be madness; the order was given to aban- 
don the position definitely. 

“Make haste, comrades!” Honor^ exclaimed. “Even if 
she is fit for no further service we’ll carry her off; those fel- 
lows shan’t have her!” 

To save the gun, even as men risk their life to save the flag; 
that was his idea. And he had not ceased to speak when he 
was stricken down as by a thunderbolt, his right arm torn from 
its socket, his left flank laid open. He had fallen upon his 
gun he loved so well, and lay there as if stretched on a bed of 
honor, with head erect, his unmutilated face turned toward the 
enemy, and bearing an expression of proud defiance that made 
him beautiful in death. From his torn jacket a letter had fallen 
to the ground and lay in the pool of blood that dribbled slowly 
from above. 

The only lieutenant left alive shouted the order: 

“Bring up the limbers!” 

A caisson had exploded with a roar that rent the skies. 
They were obliged to take the horses from another caisson in 
order to save a gun of which the team had been killed. And 
when, for the last time, the drivers had brought up their smok- 
ing horses and the guns had been limbered up, the whole bat- 
tery flew away at a gallop and never stopped until they reached 
the edge of the wood of la Garenne, nearly twelve hundred 
yards away. 

Maurice had seen the whole. He shivered with horror, and 
murmured mechanically, in a faint voice: 

“Oh! poor fellow, poor fellow ! ” 

In addition to this feeling of mental distress he had a horri- 
ble sensation of physical suffering, as if something was gnawing 
at his vitals. It was the animal portion of his nature asserting 
itself; he was at the end of his endurance, was ready to sink 
with hunger. His perceptions were dimmed, he was not even 
conscious of the dangerous position the regiment was in now it 
no longer was protected by the battery. It was more than 
likely that the enemy would not long delay to attack the plateau 
in force. 

“Look here,” he said to Jean, “I must eat — if I am to be 
killed for it the next minute, I must eat.” 


THE downfall 


281 


He opened liis knapsack and, taking out the bread with shak- 
ing hands, set his teeth in it voraciously. The bullets were 
whistling above their heads, two shells exploded only a few 
yards away, but all was as naught to him in comparison with 
his craving hunger. 

“Will you have some, Jean?” 

The corporal was watching him with hungry eyes and a stupid 
expression on his face; his stomach was also twinging him. 

“Yes, I don’t care if I do; this suffering is more than I can 
stand.’’ 

They divided the loaf between them and each devoured his 
portion gluttonously, unmindful of what was going on about 
them so long as a crumb remained. And it was at that time 
that they saw their colonel for the last time, sitting his big 
horse, with his blood-stained boot. The regiment was sur- 
rounded on every side ; already some of the companies had left 
the field. Then, unable longer to restrain their flight, with 
tears standing in his eyes and raising his sword above his head : 

“My children,’’ cried M. de Vineuil, “I commend you to 
the protection of God, who thus far has spared us all!’’ 

He rode off down the hill, surrounded by a swarm of fugi- 
tives, and vanished from their sight. 

Then, they knew not how, Maurice and Jean found them- 
selves once more behind the hedge, with the remnant of their 
company. Some forty men at the outside were all that 
remained, with Lieutenant Rochas as their commander, and 
the regimental standard was with them; the subaltern who 
carried it had furled the silk about the staff in order to try to 
save it. They made their way along the hedge, as far as it ex- 
tended, to a cluster of small trees upon a hillside, where Rochas 
made them halt and reopen fire. The men, dispersed in skir- 
mishing order and sufficiently protected, could hold their 
ground, the more that an important calvary movement was in 
preparation on their right and regiments of infantry were being 
brought up to support it. 

It was at that moment that Maurice comprehended the full 
scope of that mighty, irresistible turning movement that was 
now drawing near completion. That morning he had watched 
the Prussians debouching by the Saint-Albert pass and had 
seen their advanced guard pushed forward, first to Saint- 
Menges, then to Fleigneux, and now, behind the wood of la 
Garenne, he could hear the thunder of the artillery of the Guard, 
could behold other German uniforms arriving on the scene over 


282 


THE DOWNFALL 


the hills of Givonne. Yet a few moments, it might be, and 
the circle would be complete; the Guard would join hands I 
with the Vth corps, surrounding the French army with a living 
wall, girdling them about with a belt of flaming artillery. It | 
was with the resolve to make one supreme, desperate effort, to 1 
try to hew a passage through that advancing wall, that General | 
Margueritte’s division of the reserve cavalry was massing 
behind a protecting crest preparatory to charging. They were 
about to charge into the jaws of death, with no possibility of 
achieving any useful result, solely for the glory of France and 
the French army. And Maurice, whose thoughts turned to 
Prosper, was a witness of the terrible spectacle. 

What between the messages that were given him to carry and 
their answers. Prosper had been kept busy since daybreak 
spurring up and down the plateau of Illy. The cavalrymen 
had been awakened at peep of dawn, man by man, without 
sound of trumpet, and to make their morning coffee had 
devised the ingenious expedient of screening their fires with a 
greatcoat so as not to attract the attention of the enemy. 
Then there came a period when they were left entirely to them- 
selves, with nothing to occupy them; they seemed to be for- 
gotten by their commanders. They could hear the sound of 
the cannonading, could descry the puffs of smoke, could see 
the distant movements of the infantry, but were utterly ignorant 
of the battle, its importance, and its results. Prosper, as far as 
he was concerned, was suffering from want of sleep. The 
cumulative fatigue induced by many nights of broken rest, the 
invincible somnolency caused by the easy gait of his mount, 
made life a burden. He dreamed dreams and saw visions; 
now he was sleeping comfortably in a bed between clean sheets, 
now snoring on the bare ground among sharpened flints. For 
minutes at a time he would actually be sound asleep in his 
saddle, a lifeless clod, his steed’s intelligence answering for 
both. Under such circumstances comrades had often tumbled 
from their seats upon the road. They were so fagged that when ' 
they slept the trumpets no longer awakened them; the only 
way to rouse them from their lethargy and get them on their 
feet was to kick them soundly. 

“But what are they going to do, what are they going to do 
with us?’’ Prosper kept saying to himself. It was the only 
thing he could think of to keep himself awake. 

For six hours the cannon had been thundering. As they 
climbed a hill two comrades, riding at his side, had been 


THE DOWNFALL 


283 


struck down by a shell, and as they rode onward seven or eight 
others had bit the dust, pierced by rifle-balls that came no one 
could say whence. It was becoming tiresome, that slow 
parade, as useless as it was dangerous, up and down the battle- 
field. At last — it was about one o’clock — he learned that it 
had been decided they were to be killed off in a somewhat 
more decent manner. Margueritte’s entire division, compris- 
ing three regiments of chasseurs d’Afrique, one of chasseurs de 
France, and one of hussars, had been drawn in and posted in 
a shallow valley a little to the south of the Calvary of Illy. 
The trumpets had sounded : “Dismount!” and then the offi- 
cers’ command ran down the line to tighten girths and look' to 
packs. 

Prosper alighted, stretched his cramped limbs, and gave 
Zephyr a friendly pat upon the neck. Poor Zephyr ! he felt 
the degradation of the ignominious, heartbreaking service they 
were subjected to almost as keenly as his master; and not only 
that, but he had to carry a small arsenal of stores and imple- 
ments of various kinds: the holsters stuffed with his master’s 
linen and underclothing and the greatcoat rolled above, the 
stable suit, blouse, and overalls, and the sack containing 
brushes, currycomb, and other articles of equine toilet behind 
the saddle, the haversack with rations slung at his side, to say 
nothing of such trifles as side-lines and picket-pins, the water- 
ing bucket and the wooden basin. The cavalryman’s tender 
heart was stirred by a feeling of compassion, as he tightened up 
the girth and looked to see that everything was secure in its 
place. 

It was a trying moment. Prosper was no more a coward 
than the next man, but his mouth was intolerably dry and hot; 
he lit a cigarette in the hope that it would relieve the unpleas- 
ant sensation. When about to charge no man can assert with 
any degree of certainty that he will ride back again. The sus- 
pense lasted some five or six minutes; it was said that General 
Margueritte had ridden forward to reconnoiter the ground over 
which they were to charge; they were awaiting his return. 
The five regiments had been formed in three columns, each 
column having a depth of seven squadrons; enough to afford 
an ample meal to the hostile guns. 

Presently the trumpets rang out: “To horse!” and this was 
succeeded almost immediately by the shrill summons: “Draw 
sabers ! ” 

The colonel of each regiment had previously ridden out and 


284 


THE DOWNFALL 


taken his proper position, twenty-five yards to the front, the 
captains were all at their posts at the head of their squadrons. 
Then there was another period of anxious waiting, amid a 
silence heavy as that of death. Not a sound, not a breath, 
there, beneath the blazing sun; nothing, save the beating of 
those brave hearts. One order more, the supreme, the decisive 
one, and that mass, now so inert and motionless, would become 
a resistless tornado, sweeping all before it. 

At that juncture, however, an officer appeared coming over 
the crest of the hill in front, wounded, and preserving his seat 
in the saddle only by the assistance of a man on either side. 
No one recognized him at first, but presently a deep, ominous 
murmur began to run from squadron to squadron, which 
quickly swelled into a furious uproar. It was General Mar- 
gueritte, who had received a wound from which he died a few 
days later; a musket-ball had passed through both cheeks, car- 
rying away a portion of the tongue and palate. He was incap- 
able of speech, but waved his arm in the direction of the 
enemy. The fury of his men knew no bounds; their cries rose 
louder still upon the air. 

“It is our general! Avenge him, avenge him ! “ 

Then the colonel of the first regiment, raising aloft his saber, 
shouted in a voice of thunder : 

“Charge!” 

The trumpets sounded, the column broke into a trot and was 
away. Prosper was in the leading squadron, but almost at the 
extreme right of the right wing, a position of less danger than 
the center, upon which the enemy always naturally concentrate 
their hottest fire. When they had topped the summit of the 
Calvary and began to descend the slope beyond that led 
downward into the broad plain he had a distinct view, some 
two-thirds of a mile away, of the Prussian squares that were to 
be the object of their attack. Beside that vision all the rest 
was dim and confused before his eyes; he moved onward as 
one in a dream, with a strange ringing in his ears, a sensation 
of voidness in his mind that left him incapable of framing an 
idea. He was a part of the great engine that tore along, con- 
trolled by a superior will. The command ran along the line: 
“Keep touch of knees! Keep touch of knees!” in order to 
keep the men closed up and give their ranks the resistance and 
rigidity of a wall of granite, and as their trot became swifter 
and swifter and finally broke into a mad gallop, the chasseurs 
d’Afrique gave their wild Arab cry that excited their wiry 


THE DOWNFALL 


285 


steeds to the verge of frenzy. Onward they tore, faster and 
faster still, until their gallop was a race of unchained demons, 
their shouts the shrieks of souls in mortal agony; onward they 
plunged amid a storm of bullets that rattled on casque and 
breastplate, on buckle and scabbard, with a sound like hail; 
into the bosom of that hailstorm flashed that thunderbolt 
beneath which the earth shook and trembled, leaving behind it, 
as it passed, an odor of burned woolen and the exhalations of 
wild beasts. 

At five hundred yards the line wavered an instant, then 
swirled and broke in a frightful eddy that brought Prosper to 
the ground. He clutched Zephyr by the mane and succeeded 
in recovering his seat. The center had given way, riddled, 
almost annihilated as it was by the musketry fire, while the two 
wings had wheeled and ridden back a little way to renew their 
formation. It was the foreseen, foredoomed destruction of the 
leading squadron. Disabled horses covered the ground, some 
quiet in death, but many struggling violently in their strong 
agony; and everywhere dismounted riders could be seen, run- 
ning as fast as their short legs would let them, to capture them- 
selves another mount. Many horses that had lost their master 
came galloping back to the squadron and took their place in 
line of their own accord, to rush with their comrades back into 
the fire again, as if there was some strange attraction for them 
in the smell of gunpowder. The charge was resumed; the 
second squadron went forward, like the first, at a constantly 
accelerated rate of speed, the men bending upon their horses’ 
neck, holding the saber along the thigh, ready for use upon the 
enemy. Two hundred yards more were gained this time, amid 
the thunderous, deafening uproar, but again the center broke 
under the storm of bullets; men and horses went down in 
heaps, and the piled corpses made an insurmountable barrier 
for those who followed. Thus was the second squadron in its 
turn mown down, annihilated, leaving its task to be accom- 
plished by those who came after. 

When for the third time the men were called upon to charge 
and responded with invincible heroism. Prosper found that his 
companions were principally hussars and chasseurs de France. 
Regiments and squadrons, as organizations, had ceased to 
exist; their constituent elements were drops in the mighty wave 
that alternately broke and reared its crest again, to swallow up 
all that lay in its destructive path. He had long since lost dis- 
tinct consciousness of what was going on around him, and suf- 


286 


THE DOWNFALL 


fered his movements to be guided by his mount, faithful 
Zephyr, who had received a wound in the ear that seemed to 
madden him. He was now in the center, where all about him 
horses were rearing, pawing the air, and falling backward; men 
were dismounted as if torn from their saddle by the blast of a 
tornado, while others, shot through some vital part, retained 
their seat and rode onward in the ranks with vacant, sightless 
eyes. And looking back over the additional two hundred 
yards that this effort had won for them, they could see the' 
field of yellow stubble strewn thick with dead and dying. 
Some there were who had fallen headlong from their saddle 
and buried their face in the soft earth. Others had alighted on 
their back and were staring up into the sun with terror-stricken 
eyes that seemed bursting from their sockets. There was a 
handsome black horse, an officer’s charger, that had been dis- 
emboweled, and was making frantic efforts to rise, his fore feet 
entangled in his entrails. Beneath the fire, that became con- 
stantly more murderous as they drew nearer, the survivors in 
the wings wheeled their horses and fell back to concentrate 
their strength for a fresh onset. 

Finally it was the fourth squadron, which, on the fourth 
attempt, reached the Prussian lines. Prosper made play with 
his saber, hacking away at helmets and dark uniforms as well as 
he could distinguish them, for all was dim before him, as in a 
dense mist. Blood flowed in torrents; Zephyr’s mouth was 
smeared with it, and to account for it he said to himself that the 
good horse must have been using his teeth on the Prussians. 
The clamor around him became so great that he could not hear 
his own voice, although his throat seemed splitting from the 
yells that issued from it. But behind the first Prussian line there 
was another, and then another, and then another still. Their 
gallant efforts went for nothing; those dense masses of men 
were like a tangled jungle that closed around the horses and 
riders who entered it and buried them in its rank growths. 
They might hew down those who were within reach of their 
sabers; others stood ready to take their place, the last squad- 
rons were lost and swallowed up in their vast numbers. The 
firing, at point-blank range, was so furious that the men’s 
clothing was ignited. Nothing could stand before it, all went 
down; and the work that it left unfinished was completed by 
bayonet and musket butt. Of the brave men who rode into 
action that day two-thirds remained upon the battlefield, and 
the sole end achieved by that mad charge was to add another 


THE DOWNFALL 


287 

glorious page to history. And then Zephyr, struck by a 
musket-ball full in the chest, dropped in a heap, crushing 
beneath him Prosper’ s right thigh; and the pain was so acute 
that the young man fainted. 

Maurice and Jean, who had watched the gallant effort with 
burning interest, uttered an e.xclamation of rage. 

'' Tenner re de Dieu ! what bravery wasted!” 

And they resumed their firing from among the trees of the 
low hill where they were deployed in skirmishing order. 
Rochas himself had picked up an abandoned musket and was 
blazing away with the rest. But the plateau of Illy was lost to 
them by this time beyond hope of recovery; tjie Prussians were 
pouring in upon it from every quarter. It was somewhere in 
the neighborhood of two o’clock, and their great movement 
was accomplished; the Vth corps and the Guards had effected 
their junction, the investment of the French army was complete. 

Jean was suddenly brought to the ground. 

‘‘I am done for,” he murmured. 

He had received what seemed to him like a smart blow of a 
hammer on the crown of his head, and his kepi lay behind him 
with a great furrow plowed through its top. At first he thought 
that the bullet had certainly penetrated the skull and laid bare 
the brain; his dread of finding a yawning orifice there was so 
great that for some seconds he dared not raise his hand to 
ascertain the truth. When finally he ventured, his fingers, on 
withdrawing them, were red with an abundant flow of blood, 
and the pain was so intense that he fainted. 

Just then Rochas gave the order to fall back. The Prus- 
sians had crept up on them and were only two or three hundred 
yards away; they were in danger of being captured. 

“Be cool, don’t hurry; face about and give ’em another 
shot. Rally behind that low wall that you see down there.” 

Maurice was in despair; he knew not what to do. 

“We are not going to leave our corporal behind, are we, 
lieutenant?” 

“What are we to do? he has turned up his toes.” 

“No, no! he is breathing still. Take him along!” 

Rochas shrugged his shoulders as if to say they could not 
bother themselves for every man that dropped. A wounded 
man is esteemed of little value on the battlefield. Then Mau- 
rice addressed his supplications to Lapoulle and Pache. 

“Come, give me a helping hand. I am not strong enough 
to carry him unassisted.” 


rm DOWNFALL 


2SS 

They were deaf to his entreaties; all they could hear was the 
voice that urged them to seek safety for themselves. The Prus- 
sians were now not more than a hundred yards from them; 
already they were on their hands and knees, crawling as fast 
as they could go toward the wall. 

And Maurice, weeping tears of rage, thus left alone with his 
unconscious companion, raised him in his arms and endeavored 
to lug him away, but he found his puny strength unequal to 
the task, exhausted as he was by fatigue and the emotions of 
the day. At the first step he took he reeled and fell with his 
burden. If only he could catch sight of a stretcher-bearer! 
He strained his eyes, thought he had discovered one among the 
crowd of fugitives, and made frantic gestures of appeal; no 
one came, they were left behind, alone. Summoning up his 
strength with a determined effort of the will he seized Jean 
once more and succeeded in advancing some thirty paces, when 
a shell burst near them and he thought that all was ended, that 
he, too, was to die on the body of his comrade. 

Slowly, cautiously, Maurice picked himself up. He felt his 
body, arms, and legs; nothing, not a scratch. Why should he 
not look out for himself and fly, alone? There was time left 
still; a few bounds would take him to the wall and he would 
be saved. His horrible sensation of fear returned and made 
him frantic. He was collecting his energies to break away and 
run, when a feeling stronger than death intervened and van- 
quished the base impulse. What, abandon Jean ! he could not 
do it. It would be like mutilating his own being; the broth- 
erly affection that had bourgeoned and grown between him and 
that rustic had struck its roots down into his life, too deep to be 
slain like that. The feeling went back to the earliest days, was 
perhaps as old as the world itself; it was as if there were but 
they two upon earth, of whom one could not forsake the other 
without forsaking himself, and being doomed thenceforth to an 
eternity of solitude. Molded of the same clay, quickened by 
the same spirit, duty imperiously commanded to save himself 
in saving his brother. 

Had it not been for the crust of bread he ate an hour before 
under the Prussian shells Maurice could never have done what 
he did; how\it did it he could never in subsequent days remem- 
ber. He must have hoisted Jean upon his shoulders and 
crawled through the brush and brambles, falling a dozen times 
only to pick himself up and go on again, stumbling at every 
rut, at every pebble. His indomitable will sustained liim, his 


THE DOWNFALL 


289 


dogged resolution would have enabled him to bear a mountain 
on his back. Behind the low wall he found Rochas and the 
few men that were left of the squad, firing away as stoutly as 
ever and defending the flag, which the subaltern held beneath 
his arm. It had not occurred to anyone to designate lines of 
retreat for the several army corps in case the day should go 
against them; owing to this want of foresight every general was 
at liberty to act as seemed to him best, and at this stage of the 
conflict they all found themselves being crowded back upon 
Sedan under the steady, unrelaxing pressure of the German 
armies. The second division of the 7th corps fell back in 
comparatively good order, while the remnants of the other 
divisions, mingled with the debris of the ist corps, were already 
streaming into the city in terrible disorder, a roaring torrent of 
rage and fright that bore all, men and beasts, before it. 

But to Maurice, at that moment, was granted the satisfaction 
of seeing Jean unclose his eyes, and as he was running to a 
stream that flowed near by, for water with which to bathe his 
friend’s face, he was surprised, looking down on his right into 
a sheltered valley that lay between rugged slopes, to behold the 
same peasant whom he had seen that morning, still leisurely 
driving the plow through the furrow with the assistance of his 
big white horse. Why should he lose a day? Men might 
fight, but none the less the corn would keep on growing; and 
folks must live. 


VI. 


P on his lofty terrace, whither he had betaken himself to 



watch how affairs were shaping, Delaherche at last became 


impatient and was seized with an uncontrollable desire for news. 
He could see that the enemy’s shells were passing over the 
city and that the few projectiles which had fallen on the houses 
in the vicinity were only responses, made at long intervals, to 
the irregular and harmless fire from Fort Palatinat, but he 
could discern nothing of the battle, and his agitation was rising 
to fever heat; he experienced an imperious longing for intelli- 
gence, which was constantly stimulated by the reflection that 
his life and fortune would be in danger should the army be 
defeated. He found it impossible to remain there longer, and 
went downstairs, leaving behind him the telescope on its tripod, 
turned on the German batteries. 

When he had descended, however, he lingered a moment. 


2^0 


THE DOWNFALL 


detained by the aspect of the central garden of the factory. It 
was near one o’clock, and the ambulance was crowded with 
wounded men; the wagons kept driving up to the entrance in 
an unbroken stream. The regular ambulance wagons of the 
medical department, two-wheeled and four-wheeled, were too 
few in number to meet the demand, and vehicles of every 
description from the artillery and other trains, prolonges^ pro- 
vision vans, everything on wheels that could be picked up on 
the battlefield, came. rolling up with their ghastly loads; and 
later in the day even carrioles and market-gardeners’ carts 
were pressed into the service and harnessed to horses that were 
found straying along the roads. Into these motley convey- 
ances were huddled the men collected from the flying ambu- 
lances, where their hurts had received such hasty attention as 
could be afforded. It was a sight to move the most callous to 
behold the unloading of those poor wretches, some with a 
greenish pallor on their face, others suffused with the purple 
hue that denotes congestion; many were in a state of coma, 
others uttered piercing cries of anguish; some there were who, 
in their semi-conscious condition, yielded themselves to the 
arms of the attendants with a look of deepest terror in their 
eyes, while a few, the minute a hand was laid on them, died of 
the consequent shock. They continued to arrive in such num- 
bers that soon every bed in the vast apartment would have its 
occupant, and Major Bouroche had given orders to make use 
of the straw that had been spread thickly upon the floor at one 
end. He and his assistants had thus far been able to attend to 
all the cases with reasonable promptness; he had requested 
Mme. Delaherche to furnish him with another table, with 
mattress and oilcloth cover, for the shed where he had estab- 
lished his operating room. The assistant would thrust a nap- 
kin saturated with chloroform to the patient’s nostrils, the keen 
knife flashed in the air, there was the faint rasping of the saw, 
barely audible, the blood spurted in short, sharp jets that were 
checked immediately. As soon as one subject had been oper- 
ated on another was brought in, and they followed one another 
in such quick succession that there was barely time to pass a 
sponge over the protecting oilcloth. At the extremity of the 
grass plot, screened from sight by a clump of lilac bushes, they 
had set up a kind of morgue whither they carried the bodies of 
the dead, which were removed from the beds without a mo- 
ment’s delay in order to make room for the living, and this 
receptacle also served to receive the amputated legs and 


THE DO IV i\ FALL 


291 


arms, whatever dSh'is of flesh and bone remained upon the 
table. 

Mme. Delaherche and Gilberte, seated at the foot of one of 
the great trees, found it hard work to keep pace with the 
demand for bandages. Bouroche, who happened to be pass- 
ing, his face very red, his apron white no longer, threw a 
bundle of linen to Delaherche and shouted : 

“Here! be doing something; make yourself useful! “ 

But the manufacturer objected. “Oh! excuse me; I must 
go and try to pick up some news. One can’t tell whether his 
neck is safe or not.’’ Then, touching his lips to his wife’s 
hair: “My poor Gilberte, to think that a shell may burn us 
out of house and home at any moment! It is horrible.” 

She was very pale; she raised her head and glanced about 
her, shuddering as she did so. Then, involuntarily, her unex- 
tinguishable smile returned to her lips. 

“Oh, horrible, indeed! and all those poor men that they are 
cutting and carving. I don’t see how it is that I stay here 
without fainting.’’ 

Mme. Delaherche had watched her son as he kissed the 
young woman’s hair. She made a movement as if to part 
them, thinking of that other man who must have kissed those 
tresses so short a time ago; then her old hands trembled, she 
murmured beneath her breath : 

“What suffering all about us, mon Dieu ! It makes one for- 
get his own.” 

Delaherche left them, with the assurance that he would be 
away no longer than was necessary to ascertain the true condi- 
tion of affairs. In the Rue Maqua he was surprised to observe 
the crowds of soldiers that were streaming into the city, with- 
out arms and in torn, dust-stained uniforms. It was in vain, 
however, that he endeavored to slake his thirst for news by 
questioning them; some answered with vacant, stupid looks 
that they knew nothing, while others told long rambling stories, 
with the maniacal gestures and whirling words of one bereft of 
reason. He therefore mechanically turned his steps again 
toward the Sous Prefecture as the likeliest quarter in which to 
look for information. As he was passing along the Place du 
College two guns, probably all that remained of some battery, 
came dashing up to the curb on a gallop, and were abandoned 
there. When at last he turned into the Grande Rue he had 
further evidence that the advanced guards of the fugitives were 
beginning to take possession of the city; three dismounted 


292 


THE DOWNFALL 


hussars had seated themselves in a doorway and were sharing 
a loaf of bread; two others were walking their mounts up and 
down, leading them by the bridle, not knowing where to look 
for stabling for them; officers were hurrying to and fro dis- 
tractedly, seemingly without any distinct purpose. On the 
Place Turenne a lieutenant counseled him not to loiter unnec- 
essarily, for the shells had an unpleasant way of dropping there 
every now and then; indeed, a splinter had just demolished 
the railing about the statue of the great commander who over- 
ran the Palatinate. And as if to emphasize the officer’s advice, 
while he was making fast time down the Rue de la Sous Pre- 
fecture he saw two projectiles explode, with a terrible crash, 
on the Pont de Meuse. 

He was standing in front of the janitor’s loge^ debating with 
himself whether it would be best to send in his card and try to 
interview one of the aids-de-camp, when he heard a girlish 
voice calling him by name. 

“M. Delaherche! Come in here, quick; it is not safe 
out there. ’ ’ 

It was Rose, his little operative, whose existence he had 
quite forgotten. She might be a useful ally in assisting him 
to gain access to headquarters; he entered the lodge and 
accepted her invitation to be seated. 

“Just think, mamma is down sick with the worry and con- 
fusion; she can’t leave her bed, so, you see, I have to attend 
to everything, for papa is with the National Guards up in the 
citadel. A little while ago the Emperor left the building — I 
suppose he wanted to let people see he is not a coward — and 
succeeded in getting as far as the bridge down at the end of 
the street. A shell alighted right in front of him; one of his 
equerries had his horse killed under him. And then he came 
back — he couldn’t do anything else, could he, now?” 

“You must have heard some talk of how the battle is going. 
What do they say, those gentlemen upstairs?” 

She looked at him in surprise. Her pretty face was bright 
and smiling, with its fluffy golden hair and the clear, childish 
eyes of one who bestirred herself among her multifarious 
duties, in the midst of all those horrors, which she did not 
well understand. 

“No, I know nothing. About midday I sent up a letter for 
Marshal MacMahon, but it could not be given him right away, 
because the Emperor was in the room. They were together 
nearly an hour, the Marshal lying on his bed, the Emperor 


THE DOWNFALL 


293 


close beside him seated on a chair. That much I know for 
certain, because I saw them when the door was opened.” 

“And then, what did they say to each other?” 

She looked at him again, and could not help laughing. 

“Why, I don’t know; how could you expect me to? 
There’s not a living soul knows what they said to each other.” 

She was right; he made an apologetic gesture in recognition 
of the stupidity of his question. But the thought of that fate- 
ful conversation haunted him; the interest there was in it for 
him who could have heard it! What decision had they 
arrived at? 

“And now,” Rose added, “the Emperor is back in his cabi- 
net again, where he is having a conference with two generals 
who have just come in from the battlefield.” She checked 
herself, casting a glance at the main entrance of the building. 
“See! there is one of them, now — and there comes the other.” 

He hurried from the room, and in the two generals recog- 
nized Diicrot and Douay, whose horses were standing before 
the door. He watched them climb into their saddles and gal- 
lop away. They had hastened into the city, each inde- 
pendently of the other, after the plateau of Illy had been cap- 
tured by the enemy, to notify the Emperor that the battle was 
lost. They placed the entire situation distinctly before him; 
the army and Sedan were even then surrounded on every side; 
the result could not help but be disastrous. 

For some minutes the Emperor continued silently to pace 
the floor of his cabinet, with the feeble, uncertain step of an 
invalid. There was none with him save an aid-de-camj^, who 
stood by the door, erect and mute. And ever, to and fro, 
from the window to the fireplace, from the fireplace to the win- 
dow, the sovereign tramped wearily, the inscrutable face now 
drawn and twitching spasmodically with a nervous tic. The 
back was bent, the slioulders bowed, as if the weight of his 
falling empire pressed on them more heavily, and the lifeless 
eyes, veiled by their heavy lids, told of the anguish of the 
fatalist who has played his last card against destiny and lost. 
Each time, however, that his walk brought him to the half- 
open window he gave a start and lingered there a second. 
And during one of those brief stoppages he faltered with trem- 
bling lips : 

“Oh ! those guns, those guns, that have been going since the 
morning! ” 

The thunder of the batteries on la Marfee and at Fr^nois 


294 


THE DOWNFALL 


seemed, indeed, to resound with more terrific violence there 
than elsewhere. It was one continuous, uninterrupted crash, 
that shook the windows, nay, the very walls themselves; an 
incessant uproar that exasperated the nerves by its persistency. 
And he could not banish the reflection from his mind that, as 
the struggle was now hopeless, further resistance would be 
criminal. What would avail more bloodshed, more maiming 
and mangling; why add more corpses to the dead that were 
already piled high upon that bloody field? They were van- 
quished, it was all ended; then why not stop the slaughter? 
The abomination of desolation raised its voice to heaven: let 
it cease. 

The Emperor, again before the window, trembled and raised 
his hands to his ears, as if to shut out those reproachful 
voices. 

“Oh, those guns, those guns! Will they never be silent!" 

Perhaps the dreadful thought of his responsibilities arose 
before him, with the vision of all those thousands of bleeding 
forms with which his errors had cumbered the earth; perhaps, 
again, it was but the compassionate impulse of the tender- 
hearted dreamer, of the welbmeaning man whose mind was 
stocked with humanitarian theories. At the moment when he 
beheld utter ruin staring him in the face, in that frightful 
whirlwind of destruction that broke him like a reed and scat- 
tered his fortunes in the dust, he could yet find tears for others. 
Almost crazed at the thought of the slaughter that was merci- 
lessly going on so near him, he felt he had not strength to 
endure it longer; each report of that accursed cannonade 
seemed to pierce his heart and intensified a thousandfold his 
own private suffering. 

“Oh, those guns, those guns! they must be silenced at 
once, at once ! " 

And that monarch who no longer had a throne, for he had 
delegated all his functions to the Empress regent, that chief 
without an army, since he had turned over the supreme com- 
mand to Marshal Bazaine, now felt that he must once more 
take the reins in his hand and be the master. Since they left 
Chalons he had kept himself in the background, had issued no 
orders, content to be a nameless nullity without recognized 
position, a cumbrous burden carried about from place to place 
among the baggage of his troops, and it was only in their hour 
of defeat that the Emperor reasserted itself in him; the one 
order tJiat he was yet to give, out of the pity of his sorrowing 


TitE downfall 


295 


heart, was to raise the white flag on the citadel to request an 
armistice. 

“Those guns, oh! those guns! Take a sheet, someone, a 
tablecloth, it matters not what! only hasten, hasten, and see 
that it is done!” 

The aid-de-camp hurried from the room, and with unsteady 
steps the Emperor continued to pace his beat, back and forth, 
between the window and the fireplace, while still the batteries 
kept thundering, shaking the house from garret to foundation. 

Delaherche was still chatting with Rose in the room below 
when a non-commissioned officer of the guard came running in 
and interrupted them. 

“Mademoiselle, the house is in confusion, I cannot find a 
servant. Can you let me have something from your linen 
closet, a white cloth of some kind?” 

“Will a napkin answer?” 

“No, no, it would not be large enough. Half of a sheet, 
say.” 

Rose, eager to oblige, was already fumbling in her closet. 

“I don’t think I have any half-sheets. No, I don’t see any- 
thing that looks as if it would serve your purpose. Oh, here 
is something; could you use a tablecloth?” 

“A tablecloth! just the thing. Nothing could be better.” 
And he added as he left the room: “It is to be used as a flag 
of truce, and hoisted on the citadel to let the enemy know we 
want to stop the fighting. Much obliged, mademoiselle.” 

Delaherche gave a little involuntary start of delight; they 
were to have a respite at last, then ! Then he thought it might 
be unpatriotic to be joyful at such a time, and put on a long 
face again; but none the less his heart was very glad and he 
contemplated with much interest a colonel and captain, fol- 
lowed by the sergeant, as they hurriedly left the Sous-Pre- 
fecture. The colonel had the tablecloth, rolled in a bundle, 
beneath his arm. He thought he should like to follow them, 
and took leave of Rose, who was very proud that her napery 
was to be put to such use. It was then just striking two 
o’clock. 

In front of the Hotel de Ville Delaherche was jostled by a 
disorderly mob of half-crazed soldiers who were pushing their 
way down from the Faubourg de la Cassine; he lost sight of the 
colonel, and abandoned his design of going to witness the rais- 
ing of the white flag. He certainly would not be allowed to 
enter the citadel, and then again he had heard it reported that 


^g6 THE TOWNEALL | 

shells were falling on the college, and a new terror filled his | 
mind; his factory might have been burned since he left it. ) 
All his feverish agitation returned to him and he started off on 
a run; the rapid motion was a relief to him. But the streets | 

were blocked by groups of men, at every crossing he was delayed , 

by some new obstacle. It was only when he reached the Rue j 
Maqua and beheld the monumental fagade of his house intact, i 
no smoke or sign of fire about it, that his anxiety was allayed, 
and he heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction. He entered, and 
from the doorway shouted to his mother and Avife: I 

“It is all right! they are hoisting the white flag; the can- j 
nonade won’t last much longer.’’ j 

He said nothing more, for the appearance presented by the 
ambulance was truly horrifying. 

In the vast drying-room, the wide, door of which was stand- 
ing open, not only was every bed occupied, but there was no 
more room upon the litter that had been shaken down on the 
floor at the end of the apartment. They were commencing to 
strew straw in the spaces between the beds, the wounded were 
crowded together so closely that they were in contact. Al- 
ready there were more than two hundred patients' there, and 
more were arriving constantly; through the lofty windows the 
pitiless white daylight streamed in upon that aggregation of 
suffering humanity. Now and then an unguarded movement 
elicited an involuntary cry of anguish. The death-rattle rose 
on the warm, damp air. Down the room a low, mournful wail, 
almost a lullaby, went on and ceased not. And all about was 
silence, intense, profound, the stolid resignation of despair, 
the solemn stillness of the death-chamber, broken only by the 
tread and whispers of the attendants. Rents in tattered, shell- 
torn uniforms disclosed gaping wounds, some of which had 
received a hasty dressing on the battlefield, while others were 
still raw and bleeding. There were feet, still incased in their 
coarse shoes, crushed into a mass like jelly; from knees and 
elbows, that were as if they had been smashed by a hammer, 
depended inert limbs. There were broken hands, and- fingers 
almost severed, ready to drop, retained only by a strip of sl-^n. 
Most numerous among the casualties were the fractures; the 
poor arms and legs, red and swollen, throbbed intolerably and 
were heavy as lead. But the most dangerous hurts were those 
in the abdomen, chest, and head. There were yawning fis- 
sures that laid open the entire flank, the knotted viscera were 
drawn into great hard lumps beneath the tight-drawn skin, 


THE DOWNFALL 


297 

while as the effect of certain wounds the. patient frothed at the 
mouth and writhed like an epileptic. Here and there were 
cases where the lungs had been penetrated, the puncture now 
so minute as to permit no escape of blood, again a wide, deep 
orifice through which the red tide of life escaped in torrents; 
and the internal hemorrhages, those that were hid from sight, 
were the most terrible in their effects, prostrating their victim 
like a flash, making him black in the face and delirious. And 
finally the head, more than any other portion of the frame, gave 
evidence of hard treatment; a broken jaw, the mouth a ])ulp of 
teeth and bleeding tongue, an eye torn from its socket and 
exposed upon the cheek, a cloven skull that showed the palpi- 
tating brain beneath. Those in whose case the bullet had 
touched the brain or spinal marrow were already as dead men, 
sunk in the lethargy of coma, while the fractures and other 
less serious cases tossed restlessly on their pallets and beseech- 
ingly called for water to quench their thirst. 

Leaving the large room and passing out into the courtyard, 
the shed where the operations were going on presented another 
scene of horror. In the rush and hurry that had continued 
unabated since morning it was impossible to operate on every 
case that was brought in, so their attention had been confined 
to those urgent cases that imperatively demanded it. When- 
ever Bouroche’s rapid judgment told him that amputation was 
necessary, he proceeded at once to perform it. In the same 
way he lost not a moment’s time in probing the wound and 
extracting the projectile whenever it had lodged in some local- 
ity where it might do further mischief, as in the muscles of the 
neck, the region of the arm pit, the thigh joint, the ligaments 
of the knee and elbow. Severed arteries, too, had to be tied 
without delay. Other wounds were merely dressed by one of 
the hospital stewards under his direction and left to await 
developments. He had already with his own hand performed 
four amputations, the only rest that he allowed himself being 
to attend to some minor cases in the intervals between them, 
and was beginning to feel fatigue. There were but two tables, 
his own and another, presided over by one of his assistants; 
a sheet had been hung between them, to isolate the patients 
from each other. Although the sponge was kept constantly at 
work the tables were always red, and the buckets that were 
emptied over a bed of daisies a few steps away, the clear water 
in which a single tumbler of blood sufficed to redden, seemed 
to be buckets of unmixed blood, torrents of blood, inundating 


THE DOWNFALL 


298 

the gentle flowers of the parterre. Although the room was 
thoroughly ventilated a nauseating smell arose from the tables 
and their horrid burdens, mingled with the sweetly insipid 
odor of chloroform. 

Delaherche, naturally a soft-hearted man, was in a quiver of 
compassionate emotion at the spectacle that lay before his eyes, 
when his attention was attracted by a landau that drove up to 
the door. It was a private carriage, but doubtless the ambu- 
lance attendants had found none other ready to their hand and 
had crowded their patients into it. There were eight of them, 
sitting on one another’s knees, and as the last man alighted the 
manufacturer recognized Captain Beaudoin, and gave utterance 
to a cry of terror and surprise. 

“Ah, my poor friend! Wait, I will call my mother and my 
wife.” 

They came running up, leaving the bandages to be rolled by 
servants. The attendants had already raised the captain and 
brought him into the room, and were about to lay him down 
upon a pile of straw when Delaherche noticed, lying on a bed, 
a soldier whose ashy face and staring eyes exhibited no sign 
of life. 

“Look, is he not dead, that man?” 

“That’s so!” replied the attendant. “He may as well 
make room for someone else!” 

He and one of his mates took the body by the arms and legs 
and carried it off to the morgue that had been extemporized 
behind the lilac bushes. A dozen corpses were already there 
in a row , stiff and stark, some drawn out to their full length as 
if in an attempt to rid themselves of the agony that racked 
them, others curled and twisted in every attitude of suffering. 
Some seemed to have left the world with a sneer on their faces, 
their eyes retroverted till naught was visible but the whites, the 
grinning lips parted over the glistening teeth, while in others, 
with faces unspeakably sorrowful, big tears still stood on the 
cheeks. One, a meje boy, short and slight, half whose face 
had been shot away by a cannon-ball, had his two hands 
clasped convulsively above his heart, and in them a woman’s 
photograph, one of those pale, blurred pictures that are made 
in the quarters of the poor, bedabbled with his blood. And 
at the feet of the dead had been thrown in a promiscuous pile 
the amputated arms and legs, the refuse of the knife and saw of 
the operating table, just as the butcher sweeps into a corner of 
his shop the offal, the worthless odds and ends of flesh and bone. 


THE DOWNFALL 


299 

Gilberte shuddered as she looked on Captain Beaudoin. 
Good God ! how pale he was, stretched out on his mattress, his 
face so white beneath the encrusting grime! And the thought 
that but a few short hours before he had held her in his arms, 
radiant in all his manly strength and beauty, sent a chill of 
terror to her heart. She kneeled beside him. 

“What a terrible misfortune, my friend! But it won’t 
amount to anything, will it?’’ And she drew her handker- 
chief from her pocket and began mechanically to wipe his face, 
for she could not bear to look at it thus soiled with powder, 
sweat, and clay. It seemed to her, too, that she would be 
helping him by cleansing him a little. “Will it? it is only 
your leg that is hurt; it won’t amount to anything.” 

The captain made an effort to rouse himself from his semi- 
conscious state, and opened his eyes. He recognized his 
friends and greeted them with a faint smile. 

“Yes, it is only the leg. I was not even aware of being hit; 

I thought I had made a misstep and fallen ” He spoke 

with great difficulty. “Oh! I am so thirsty!” 

Mme. Delaherche, who was standing at the other side of the 
mattress, looking down compassionately on the young man, has- 
tily left the room. She returned with a glass and a carafe of 
water into which a little cognac had been poured, and when 
the captain had greedily swallowed the contents of the glass, 
she distributed what remained in the carafe among the occu- 
pants of the adjacent beds, who begged with trembling out- 
stretched hands and tearful voices for a drop. A zouave, for 
whom there was none left, sobbed like a child in his disappoint- 
ment. 

Delaherche was meantime trying to gain the major’s ear to 
see if he could not prevail on him to take up the captain’s case 
out of its regular turn. Bouroche came into the room just 
then, with his blood-stained apron and lion’s mane hanging in 
confusion about his perspiring face, and the men raised their 
heads as he passed and endeavored to stop him, all clamoring 
at once for recognition and immediate attention: “This way, 
major! It’s my turn, major!” Faltering words of entreaty 
went up to him, trembling hands clutched at his garments, but 
he, wrapped up in the work that lay before him and puffing 
with his laborious exertions, continued to plan and calculate 
and listened to none of them. He communed with himself 
aloud, counting them over with his finger and classifying them, 
assigning them their numbers; this one first, then that one, 


300 


THE downfall 


then that other fellow; one, two, three; the jaw, the ami, then 
the thigh; while the assistant who accompanied him on his 
round made himself all ears in his effort to memorize his 
directions. 

“Major,” said Delaherche, plucking him by the sleeve, 
“there is an officer over here, Captain Beaudoin ” 

Bouroche interrupted him. “What, Beaudoin here! Ah, 
the poor devil!” And he crossed over at once to the side of 
the wounded man. A single glance, however, must have suf- 
ficed to show him that the case was a bad one, for he added in 
the same breath, without even stooping to examine the injured 
member: “Good! I will have them bring him to me at once, 
just as soon as I am through with the operation that is now in 
hand.” 

And he went back to the shed, followed by Delaherche, who 
would not lose sight of him for fear lest he might forget his 
promise. 

The business that lay before him now was the resection of a 
shoulder-joint in accordance with Lisfranc’s method, which 
surgeons never fail to speak of as a “very pretty” operation, 
something neat and expeditiousytbarely occupying forty seconds 
in the performance. The patient was subjected to the influ- 
ence of chloroform, while an assistant grasped the shoulder 
with both hands, the fingers under the armpit, the thumbs on 
top. Bouroche, brandishing the long, keen knife, cried: 
“Raise him!” seized the deltoid with his left hand and with a 
swift movement of the right cut through the flesh of the arm 
and severed the muscle; then, with a deft rearward cut, he 
disarticulated the joint at a single stroke, and presto! the arm 
fell on the table, taken off in three motions. The assistant 
slipped his thumbs over the brachial artery in such manner as 
to close it. “Let him down!” Bouroche could not restrain a 
little pleased laugh as he proceeded to secure the artery, for he 
had done it in thirty-five seconds. All that was left to do now 
was to bring a flap of skin down over the wound and stitch it, 
in appearance something like a flat epaulette. It was not only 
“pretty,” but exciting, on account of the danger, for a man 
will pump all the blood out of his body in two minutes ^hrough 
the brachial, to say nothing of the risk there is in bringing a 
patient to a sitting posture when under the influence of anaes- 
thetics. 

Delaherche was white as a ghost; a thrill of horror ran down 
his back. He would have turned and fled, but time was not 


THE downfall 


30t 


given him; the arm was already off. The soldier was a new 
recruit, a sturdy peasant lad; on emerging from his state of 
coma he beheld a hospital attendant carrying away the ampu- 
tated limb to conceal it behind the lilacs. Giving a quick 
downward glance at his .shoulder, he saw the bleeding stump 
and knew what had been done, whereon he became furiously 
angry. 

“Ah, no77i de Dieu! what have you been doing to me? It is 
a shame!” 

Bouroche was too done up to make hint an immediate 
answer, but presently, in his fatherly way : 

“I acted for the best; I didn’t want to see you kick the 
bucket, my boy. Besides, I asked you, and you told me to go 
ahead.” 

“I told you to go ahead! I did? How could I know what 
I was saying!” His anger subsided and he began to weep 
scalding tears. “What is going to become of me now?” 

They carried him away and laid him on the straw, and gave 
the table and its covering a thorough cleansing; and the 
buckets of blood-red water that they threw out across the grass 
plot gave to the pale daisies a still deeper hue of crimson. 

When Delaherche had in some degree recovered his equa- 
nimity he was astonished to notice that the bombardment was 
still going on. Why had it not been silenced? Rose’s table- 
cloth must have been hoisted over the citadel by that time, and 
yet it seemed as if the fire of the Prussian batteries was more 
rapid -and furious than ever. The uproar was such that one 
could not hear his own voice; the sustained vibration tried the 
stoutest nerves. On both operators and patients the effect 
could not but be most unfavorable of those incessant detona- 
tions that seemed to penetrate the inmost recesses of one’s 
being. The entire hospital was in a state of feverish alarm 
and apprehension. 

“I supposed it was all over; what can they mean by keeping 
it up?” exclaimed Delaherche, who was nervously listening, 
expecting each shot would be the last. 

Returning to Bouroche to remind him o( his promise and 
conduct him to the captain, he was astonished to find him 
seated on a bundle of straw before two pails of iced water, into 
which he had plunged both his arms, bared to the shoulder. 
The major, weary and disheartened, overwhelmed by a sensa- 
tion of deepest melancholy and dejection, had reached one of 
those terrible moments when the practitioner becomes consciousi 


302 


THE DOWNFALL 


of his own impotency; he had exhausted his strength, physical 
and moral, and taken this means to restore it. And yet he 
was not a weakling; he was steady of hand and firm of heart; 
but the inexorable question had presented itself to him : 
“What is the use?” The feeling that he could accomplish so 
little, that so much must be left undone, had suddenly par- 
alyzed him. What was the use? since Death, in spite of his 
utmost effort, would always be victorious. 

Two attendants came in, bearing Captain Beaudoin on a 
stretcher. 

“Major,” Delaherche ventured to say, “here is the cap- 
tain.” 

Bouroche opened his eyes, withdrew his arms from their 
cold bath, shook and dried them on the straw. Then, rising 
to his feet: 

“Ah, yes; the next one Well, well, the day's work is 

not yet done.” And he shook the tawny locks upon his lion's 
head, rejuvenated and refreshed, restored to himself once more 
by the invincible habit of duty and the stern discipline of his 
profession. 

“Good! just above the right ankle,” said Bouroche, with 
unusuai garrulity, intended to quiet the nerves of the patient. 
“You displayed wisdom in selecting the location of your 
wound; one is not much the worse for a hurt in that quarter. 
Now we'll just take a little look at it.” 

But Beaudoin's persistently lethargic condition evidently 
alarmed him. He inspected the contrivance that had been 
applied by the field attendant to check the flow of blood, which 
was simply a cord passed around the leg outside the trousers 
and twisted tight with the* assistance of a bayonet sheath, with 
a growling request to be informed what infernal ignoramus had 
done that. Then suddenly he saw how matters were and was 
silent; while they were bringing him in from the field in the 
overcrowded landau the improvised tourniquet had become 
loosened and slipped down, thus giving rise to an extensive 
hemorrhage. He relieved his feelings by storming at the 
hospital steward who was assisting him. 

“You confounded snail, cut! Are you going to keep me 
here all day?” 

The attendant cut away the trousers and drawers, then the 
shoe and sock, disclosing to view the leg and foot in their pale 
nudity, stained with blood. Just over the ankle was a fright- 
ful laceration, into which the splinter of the bursting shell had 


THE DOWNFALL 


303 


driven a piece of the red cloth of the trousers. The muscle 
protruded from the lips of the gaping orifice, a roll of whitish, 
mangled tissue. 

Gilberte had to support herself against one of the uprights 
of the shed. Ah ! that flesh, that poor flesh that was so white, 
now all torn and maimed and bleeding! Despite the horror 
and terror of the sight she could not turn away her eyes. 

“Confound it!” Bouroche exclaimed, “they have made a 
nice mess here!” 

He felt the foot and found it cold; the pulse, if any, was so 
feeble as to be undistinguishable. His face was very grave, and 
he pursed his lips in a way that was habitual with him when he 
had a more than usually serious case to deal with. 

“Confound it,” he repeated, “I don’t like the looks of that 
foot!” 

The captain, whom his anxiety had finally aroused from his 
semi-somnolent state, asked : 

“What were you saying, major.?” 

Bouroche’s tactics, whenever an amputation became neces- 
sary, were never to appeal directly to the patient for the custo- 
mary authorization. He preferred to have the patient accede 
to it voluntarily. 

“I was saying that I don’t like the looks of that foot,” he 
murmured, as if thinking aloud. “I am afraid we shan’t be 
able to save it.” 

In a tone of alarm Beaudoin rejoined: “Come, major, there 
is no use beating about the bush. What is your opinion?” 

“My opinion is that you are a brave man, captain, and that 
you are going to let me do what the necessity of the case 
demands.” 

* To Captain Beaudoin it seemed as if a sort of reddish vapor 
arose before his eyes through which he saw things obscurely. 
He understood. But notwithstanding the intolerable fear that 
appeared to be clutching at his throat, he replied, unaffectedly 
and bravely: 

“Do as you think best, major.” 

The preparations did not consume much time. The assistant 
had saturated a cloth \fith chloroform and was holding it in 
readiness; it was at once applied to the patient’s nostrils. 
Then, just at the moment that the brief struggle set jn that 
precedes anaesthesia, two attendants raised the captain and 
placed him on the mattress upon his back, in such a position 
that the legs should be free; one of them retained his grasp on 


304 


THE DOWNFALL 


the left limb, holding it flexed, while an assistant, seizing the 
right, clasped it tightly with both his hands in the region of the 
groin in order to compress the arteries. 

Gilberte, when she saw Bouroche approach the victim with 
the glittering steel, could endure no more. 

“Oh, don’t! oh, don’t! it is too horrible!’’ 

And she would have fallen had it not been that Mme. Dela- 
herche put forth her arm to sustain her. 

“But why do 3^011 stay here?’’ 

Both the women remained, however. They averted their 
eyes, not wishing to see the rest; motionless and trembling they 
stood locked in each other’s arms, notwithstanding the little 
love there was between them. 

At no time during the day had the artillery thundered more 
loudly than now. It was three o’clock, and Delaherche 
declared angrily that he gave it up — he could not understand 
it. There could be no doubt about it now, the Prussian bat- 
teries, instead of slackening their fire, were extending it. 
Why? What had happened? It was as if all the forces of the 
nether regions had been unchained; the earth shook, the heav- 
ens were on fire. The ring of flame-belching mouths of bronze 
that encircled Sedan, the eight hundred guns of the German 
armies, that were served with such activity and raised such an 
uproar, were expending their thunders on the adjacent fields; 
had that concentric fire been focused upon the city, had the 
batteries on those commanding heights once begun to play 
upon Sedan, it would have been reduced to ashes and pulver- 
ized into dust in less than fifteen minutes. But now the pro- 
jectiles were again commencing to fall upon the houses, the 
crash that told of ruin and destruction was heard more fre- 
quently. One exploded in the Rue des Voyards, another 
grazed the tall chimney of the factory, and the bricks and 
mortar came tumbling to the ground directly in front of the 
shed where the surgeons were at work. Bouroche looked up 
and grumbled: 

“Are they trying to finish our wounded for us? Really, this 
racket is intolerable.’’ 

In the meantime an attendant had seized the captain’s leg, 
and the major, with a swift circular motion of his hand, made 
an incision in the skin below the knee and some two inches 
under the spot where he intended to saw the bone; then, still 
employing the same thin-bladed knife, that he did not change 
in order to get on more rapidly, he loosened the skin on the 


THE DOWNFALL 


305; 

superior side of the incision and turned it back, much as one’ 
would peel an orange. But just as he was on the point of 
dividing the muscles a hospital steward came up and whispered 
in his ear : 

“Number two has just slipped his cable.” 

The major did not hear, owing to the fearful uproar. 

“Speak up, can’t you! My ear drums are broken with their 
d — d cannon.” 

“Number two has just slipped his cable.” 

“Who is that, number two?” 

“The arm, you know.” 

“Ah, very good! Well, then, you can bring me number 
three, the jaw.” 

And with wonderful dexterity, never changing his position, 
he cut through the muscles clean down to the bone with a 
single motion of his wrist. He laid bare the tibia and fibula, 
introduced between them an implement to keep them in posi- 
tion, drew the saw across them once, and they were sundered. 
And the foot remained in the hands of the attendant who was 
holding it. 

The flow of blood had been small, thanks to the pressure 
maintained by the assistant higher up the leg, at the thigh. 
The ligature of the three arteries was quickly accomplished, 
but the major shook his head, and when the assistant had 
removed his fingers he examined the stump, murmuring, cer- 
tain that the patient could not hear as yet : 

“It looks bad; there’s no blood coming from the arterioles.’” 

And he completed his diagnosis of the case by an expressive 
gesture : Another poor fellow who was soon to answer the great: 
roll-call! while on his perspiring face was again seen that; 
expression of weariness and utter dejection, that hopeless,, 
unanswerable: “What is the use?” since out of every ten 
cases that they assumed the terrible responsibility of operating 
on they did not succeed in saving four. He wiped his fore- 
head, and set to work to draw down the flap of skin and put in 
the three sutures that were to hold it in place. 

Delaherche having told Gilberte that the operation was com- 
pleted, she turned her gaze once more upon the table; she 
caught a glimpse of the captain’s foot, however, as the attend- 
ant was carrying it away to the place behind the lilacs. The 
charnel house there continued to receive fresh occupants; two 
more corpses had recently been brought in and added to the 
ghastly array, one with blackened lips still parted wide as if 


THE DOWNFALL 


306 

rending the air with ’shrieks of anguish, the other, his form so 
contorted and contracted in the convulsions of the last agony 
that he was like a stunted, malformed boy. Unfortunately, 
there was beginning to be a scarcity of room in the little 
secluded corner, and the human debris had commenced to 
overflow and invade the adjacent alley. The attendant hesi- 
tated a moment, in doubt what to do with the captain’s foot, 
then finally concluded to throw it on the general pile. 

“Well, captain, that’s over with,” the major said to Beau- 
doin when he regained consciousness. “You’ll be all right 
now. ’’ 

But the captain did not show the cheeriness that follows a 
successful operation. He opened his eyes and made an 
attempt to raise himself, then fell back on his pillow, murmur- 
ing wearily, in a faint voice’: 

“Thanks, major. Tm glad it’s over.’’ 

He was conscious of the pain, however, when the alcohol of 
the dressing touched the raw flesh. He flinched a little, com- 
plaining that they were burning him. And just as they were 
bringing up the stretcher preparatory to carrying him back into 
the other room the factory was shaken to its foundations by a 
most terrific explosion; a shell had burst directly in the rear of 
the shed, in the small courtyard where the pump was situated. 
The glass in the windows was shattered into fragments, and a 
dense cloud of smoke came pouring into the ambulance. The 
wounded men, stricken with panic terror, arose from their bed 
of straw; all were clamoring with affright; all wished to fly at 
once. 

Delaherche rushed from the building in consternation to see 
what damage had been done. Did they mean to burn his 
house down over his head? What did it all mean? Why did 
they open fire again when the Emperor had ordered that it 
should cease? 

“Thunder and lightning! Stir yourselves, will you!’’ 
Bouroche shouted to his staff, who were standing about with 
pallid faces, transfixed by terror. “Wash off the table ; go and 
bring me in number three!’’ 

They cleansed the table; and once more the crimson con- 
tents of the buckets were hurled across the grass plot upon the 
bed of daisies, which was now a sodden, blood-soaked mat of 
flowers and verdure. And Bouroche, to relieve the tedium 
until the attendants should bring him “number three,’’ applied 
himself to probing for a musket-ball, which, having first broken 


Tttn DOWNPALL 


the patient’s lower jaw, had lodged in the root of the tongue. 
The blood flowed freely and collected on his fingers in glutin- 
ous masses. eU; 

Captain Beaudoin was again resting on his mattress in the 
large room. Gilberte and Mme. Delaherche had followed the 
stretcher when he was carried from the operating table, and 
even Delaherche, notwithstanding his anxiety, came in for a 
moment’s chat. 

“Lie here and rest a few minutes, Captain. We will have a 
room prepared for you, and you shall be our guest.’’ 

But the wounded man shook off his lethargy and for a mo- 
ment had command of his faculties. 

“No, it is not worth while; I feel that I am going to die.” 

And he looked at them with wide eyes, filled with the horror 
of death. 

“Oh, Captain! why do you talk like that?” murmured Gil- 
berte, with a shiver, while she forced a smile to her lips. 
“You will be quite well a month hence.” 

He shook his head mournfully, and in the room was con- 
scious of no presence save hers; on all his face was expressed 
his unutterable yearning for life, his bitter, almost craven 
regret that he was to be snatched away so young, leaving so 
many joys behind untasted. 

“I am going to die, I am going to die. Oh! ’tis hor- 
rible ” 

Then suddenly he became conscious of his torn, soiled uni- 
form and the grime upon his hands, and it made him feel 
uncomfortable to be in the company of women in such a state. 
It shamed him to show such weakness, and his desire to look 
and be the gentleman to the last restored to him his manhood. 
When he spoke again it was in a tone almost of cheerfulness. 

“If I have got to die, though, I would rather it should be 
with clean hands. I should count it a great kindness, madame, 
if you would moisten a napkin and let me have it,” 

Gilberte sped away and quickly returned with the napkin, 
with which she herself cleansed the hands of the dying man. 
Thenceforth, desirous of quitting the scene with dignity, he 
displayed much firmness. Delaherche did what he could to 
cheer him, and assisted his wife in the small attentions she 
offered for his comfort. Old Mme. Delaherche, too, in pres- 
ence of the man whose hours were numbered, felt her enmity 
subsiding. She would be silent, she who knew all and had 
sworn to impart her knowledge to her son. What would it 


3o8 


THE DOWNFALL 


avail to excite discord in the household, since death would 
soon obliterate all trace of the wrong? 

The end came very soon. {^'®^tain Beaudoin, whose strength 
was ebbing rapidly, relapsed hrto his comatose condition, and 
a cold sweat broke out and stood in beads upon his neck and 
forehead. He opened his eyes again, and began to feebly 
grope about him with his stiffening fingers, as if feeling for a 
covering that was not there, pulling at it with a gentle, contin- 
uous movement, as if to draw it up around his shoulders. 

“It is cold — Oh! it is so cold.” 

And so he passed from life, peacefully, without a struggle; 
and on his wasted, tranquil face rested an expression of 
unspeakable melancholy. 

Delaherche saw to it that the remains, instead of being borne 
away and placed among the common dead, were deposited in 
one of the outbuildings of the factory. He endeavored to 
prevail on Gilberte, who was tearful and disconsolate, to retire 
to her apartment, but she declared that to be alone now would 
be more than her nerves could stand, and begged to be allowed 
to remain with her mother-in-law in the ambulance, where the 
noise and movement would be a distraction to her. She was 
seen presently running to carry a drink of water to a chasseur 
d’Afrique whom his fever had made delirious, and she assisted 
a hospital steward to dress the hand of a little recruit, a lad of 
twenty, who had had his thumb shot away and come in on foot 
from the battlefield; and as he was jolly and amusing, treating 
his wound with all the levity and nonchalance of the Parisian 
rollicker, she was soon laughing and joking as merrily as he. 

While the captain lay dying the cannonade seemed, if that 
were possible, to have increased in violence; another shell had 
landed in the garden, shattering one of the old elms. Terror- 
stricken men came running in to say that all Sedan was in dan- 
ger of destruction; a great fire had broken out in the Faubourg 
de la Cassine. If the bombardment should continue with such 
fury for any length of time there would be nothing left of the 
city. 

“It can’t be; I am going to see about it!” Delaherche 
exclaimed, violently excited. 

“Where are you going, pray?” asked Bouroche. 

“Why, to the Sous-Prefecture, to see what the Emperor 
means by fooling us in this way, with his talk of hoisting the 
white flag.” 

For some few seconds the major stood as if petrified at the 


THE DOWNFALL 


309 


idea of defeat and capitulation, which presented itself to him 
then for the first time in the midst of his impotent efforts to 
save the lives of the poor maimed creatures they were bringing 
in to him from the field. Rage and grief were in his voice as 
he shouted: 

“Go to the devil, if you will! All you can do won’t keep 
us from being soundly whipped!’’ 

On leaving the factory Delaherche found it no easy task to 
squeeze his way through the throng; at every instant the crowd 
of straggling soldiers that filled the streets received fresh acces- 
sions. He questioned several of the officers whom he encoun- 
tered; not one of them had seen the white flag on the citadel. 
Finally he met a colonel, who declared that he had caught a 
momentary glimpse of it: that it had been run up and then 
immediately hauled down That explained matters; either the 
Germans had not seen it, or seeing it appear and disappear so 
quickly, had inferred the distressed condition of the French 
and redoubled their fire in consequence. There was a story in 
circulation how a general officer, enraged beyond control at the 
sight of the flag, had wrested it from its bearer, broken the 
staff, and trampled it in the mud. And still the Prussian bat- 
teries continued to play upon the city, shells were falling upon 
the roofs and in the streets, houses were in flames ; a woman 
had just been killed at the corner of the Rue Pont de Meuse 
and the Place Turenne. 

At the Sous-Prefecture Delaherche failed to find Rose at her 
usual station in the janitor’s lodge. Everywhere were evi- 
dences of disorder; all the doors were standing open; the reign 
of terror had commenced. As there was no sentry or anyone 
to prevent, he went upstairs, encountering on the way only a 
few scared-looking men, none of whom made any offer to stop 
him. He had reached the first story and was hesitating what 
to do next when he saw the young girl approaching him. 

“Oh, M. Delaherche! isn’t this dreadful! Here, quick! 
this way, if you would like to see the Emperor.’’ 

On the left of the corridor a door stood ajar, and through 
the narrow opening a glimpse could be had of the sovereign, 
who had resumed his weary, anguished tramp between the fire- 
place and the window. Back and forth he shuffled with heavy, 
dragging steps, and ceased not, despite his unendurable suffer- 
ing. An aid-de-camp had just entered the room — it was he 
who had failed to close the door behind him — and Delaherche 
heard the Emperor a.sk him in a sorrowfully reproachful voice: 


THE DOWNFALL 


310 

“What is the reason of this continued firing, sir, after I gave 
orders to hoist the white flag?” 

The torture to him had become greater than he could bear, 
that never-ceasing cannonade, that seemed to grow more furi- 
ous with every minute. Every time he approached the window 
it pierced him to the heart. More spilling of blood, more use- 
less squandering of human life! At every moment the piles of 
corpses were rising higher on the battlefield, and his was the 
responsibility. The compassionate instincts that entered so 
largely into his nature revolted at it, and more than ten times 
already he had asked that question of those who approached 
him. 

“I gave orders to raise the white flag; tell me, why do they 
continue firing ?” 

The aid-de-camp made answer in a voice so low that Dela- 
herche failed to catch its purport. The Emperor, moreover, 
seemed not to pause to listen, drawn by some irresistible 
attraction to that window at which, each time he approached 
it, he was greeted by that terrible salvo of artillery that rent 
and tore his being. His pallor was greater even than it had 
been before; his poor, pinched, wan face, on which were still 
visible traces of the rouge that had been applied that morning, 
bore witness to his anguish. 

At that moment a short, quick-motioned man in dust-soiled 
uniform, whom Delaherche recognized as General Lebrun, 
hurriedly crossed the corridor and pushed open the door, 
without waiting to be announced. And scarcely was he in the 
room when again was heard the Emperor’s so oft repeated 
question. 

“Why do they continue to fire. General, when I have given 
orders to hoist the white flag?” 

The aid-de-camp left the apartment, shutting the door 
behind him, and Delaherche never knew what was the gener- 
al’s answer. The vision had faded from his sight. 

“Ah!” said Rose, “things are going badly; I can see that 
clearly enough by all those gentlemen’s faces. It is bad for my 
tablecloth, too; I am afraid I shall never see it again; some- 
body told me it had been torn in pieces. But it is for the 
Emperor that I feel most sorry in all this business, for he is in 
a great deal worse condition than the marshal; he would be 
much better off in his bed than in that room, where he is wear- 
ing himself out with his everlasting walking.” 

She spoke with much feeling, and on her pretty pink and 


THE DOWNFALL 


311 

white face there was an expression of sincere pity, but Dela- 
herche, whose Bonapartist ardor had somehow cooled consid- 
erably during the last two days, said to himself that she was a 
little fool. He nevertheless remained chatting with her a 
moment in the hall below while waiting for General Lebrun to 
take his departure, and when that officer appeared and left the 
building he followed him. 

General Lebrun had explained to the Emperor that if it was 
thought best to apply for an armistice, etiquette demanded that 
a letter to that effect, signed by the commander-in-chief of the 
French forces, should be dispatched to the German com- 
mander-in-chief. He had also offered to write the letter, go 
in search of General de Wimpffen, and obtain his signature to 
it. He left the Sous-Pr^fecture with the letter in his pocket, 
but apprehensive he might not succeed in finding de Wimpffen, 
entirely ignorant as he- was of the general’s whereabouts on the 
field of battle. Within the ramparts of Sedan, moreover, the 
crowd was so dense that he was compelled to walk his horse, 
which enabled Delaherche to keep him in sight until he 
reached the Minil gate. 

Once outside upon the road, however. General Lebrun 
struck into a gallop, and when near Balan had the good for- 
tune to fall in with the chief. Only a few minutes previous to 
this the latter had written to the Emperor: “Sire, come and 
put yourself at the head of your troops; they will force a 
passage through the enemy’s lines for you, or perish in the 
attempt;’’ therefore he flew into a furious passion at the mere 
mention of the word armistice. No, no! he would sign noth- 
ing, he would fight it out! This was about half-past three 
o’clock, and it was shortly afterward that occurred the gallant, 
but mad attempt, the last serious effort of the day, to pierce 
the Bavarian lines and regain possession of Bazeilles. In order 
to put heart into the troops a ruse was resorted to : in the 
streets of Sedan and in the fields outside the walls the shout 
was raised: “Bazaine is coming up! Bazaine is at hand!’’ 
Ever since morning many had allowed themselves to be deluded 
by that hope; each time that the Germans opened fire with a 
fresh battery it was confidently asserted to be the guns of the 
army of Metz. In the neighborhood of twelve hundred men 
were collected, soldiers of all arms, from every corps, and the 
little column bravely advanced into the storm of missiles that 
swept the road, at double time. It was a splendid spectacle of 
heroism and endurance while it lasted; the numerous casualties 


312 


THE DOWNFALL 


did not check the ardor of the survivors, nearly five hundred 
yards were traversed with a courage and nerve that seemed 
almost like madness; but soon there were great gaps in the 
ranks, the bravest began to fall 'back. What could they do 
against overwhelming numbers? It was a mad attempt, any- 
way; the desperate effort of a commander who could not bring 
Inmself to acknowledge that he was defeated. And it ended 
by General de Wimpffen finding himself and General Lebrun 
alone together on the Bazeilles road, which they had to make 
up their mind to abandon to the enemy, for good and all. All 
that remained for them to do was to retreat and seek security 
under the walls of Sedan. 

Upon losing sight of the general at the Minil gate Delaherche 
had hurried back to the factory at the best speed he was capa- 
ble of, impelled by an irresistible longing to have another 
look from his observatory at what was going on in the dis- 
tance. Just as he reached his door, however, his progress 
was arrested a moment by encountering Colonel de Vineuil, 
who, with his blood-stained boot, was being brought in for 
treatment in a condition of semi-consciousness, upon a bed of 
straw that had been prepared for him on the floor of a market- 
gardener’s wagon. The colonel had persisted in his efforts to 
collect the scattered fragments of his regiment until he dropped 
from his horse. He was immediately carried upstairs and put 
to bed in a room on the first floor, and Bouroche, who was 
summoned at once, finding the injury not of a serious charac- 
ter, had only to apply a dressing to the wound, from which he 
first extracted some bits of the leather of the boot. The 
worthy doctor was wrought up to a high pitch of excitement; 
he exclaimed, as he went downstairs, that he would rather cut 
off one of his own legs than continue working in that unsatis- 
factory, slovenly way, without a tithe of either the assistants or 
the appliances that he ought to have. Below in the ambulance, 
indeed, they no longer knew where to bestow the cases that 
were brought them, and had been obliged to have recourse to 
the lawn, where they laid them on the grass. There were 
already two long rows of them, exposed beneath the shrieking 
shells, filling the air with their dismal plaints while waiting for 
his ministrations. The number of cases brought in since noon 
exceeded four hundred, and in response to Bouroche’ s repeated 
appeals for assistance he had been sent one young doctor from 
the city. Good as was his will, he was unequal to the task,- 
he probed, sliced, sawed, sewed like a man frantic, and was 


TH^ DOWNFALL 


313 


reduced to despair to see his work continually accumulating 
before him. Gilberte, satiated with sights of horror, unable 
longer to endure the sad spectacle of blood and tears, remained 
upstairs with her uncle, the colonel, leaving to Mme. Delaherche 
the care of moistening fevered lips and wiping the cold sweat 
from the brow of the dying. 

Rapidly climbing the stairs to his terrace, Delaherche endeav- 
ored to form some idea for himself of how matters stood. The 
city had suffered, less injury than was generally supposed; 
there was one great conflagration, however, over in the Faii- 
bourg de la Cassine, from which dense volumes of smoke were 
rising. Fort Palatinat had discontinued its fire, doubtless 
because the ammunition was all expended; the guns mounted 
on the Porte de Paris alone continued to make themselves 
heard at infrequent intervals. But something that he beheld 
presently had greater interest for his eyes than all beside; they 
had run up the white flag on the citadel again, but it must be 
that it was invisible from the battlefield, for there was no per- 
ceptible .slackening. of the fire. The Balan road was concealed 
from his vision by the neighboring roofs; he was unable to 
make out what the troops were doing in that direction. Ap- 
plying his eye to the telescope, however, which remained as he 
had left it, directed on la Marfee, he again beheld the cluster of 
officers that he had seen in that same place about midday. 
The master of them all, that miniature toy-soldier in lead, half 
finger high, in whom he had thought to recognize the King of 
Prussia, was there still, erect in his plain, dark uniform before 
the other officers, who, in their showy trappings, were for the 
most part reclining carelessly on the grass. Among them were 
officers from foreign lands, aids-de-camp, generals, high offi- 
cials, princes; all of them with field glasses in their hands, with 
which, since early morning, they had been watching every 
phase of the death-struggle of the army of Chalons, as if they 
were at the play. And the direful drama was drawing to its end. 

From among the trees that clothed the summit of la Marfee 
King William had just witnessed the junction of his armies. It 
was an accomplished fact; the third army, under the leadership 
of his son, the Crown Prince, advancing by the way of Saint- 
Menges and Fleigneux, had secured possession of the plateau of 
Illy, while the fourth, commanded by the Crown Prince of 
Saxony, turning the wood of la Garenne and, coming up 
through Givonne and Daigny, had also reached its appointed 
rendezvous. There, too, the Xlth and Vth corps had joined 


314 


THE DOWNFALL 


hands with the Xllth corps and th-e Guards. The gallant but 
ineffectual charge of Margueritte’s division in its supreme effort 
to break through the hostile lines at the very moment when the 
circle was being rounded out had elicited from the king the 
exclamation: “Ah, the brave fellows!” Now the great move- 
ment, inexorable as fate, the details of which had been 
arranged with such mathematical precision, was complete, the 
jaws of the vise had closed, and stretching on his either hand 
far in the distance, a mighty wall of adamant surrounding the 
army of the French, were the countless men and guns that 
called him master. At the north the contracting lines main- 
tained a constantly increasing pressure on the vanquished, for- 
cing them back upon Sedan under the merciless fire of the bat- 
teries that lined t^ie horizon in an array without a break. 
Toward the south, at Bazeilles, where the conflict had ceased 
to rage and the scene was one of mournful desolation, great 
clouds of smoke were rising from the ruins of what had once 
been happy homes, while the Bavarians, now masters of Balan, 
had advanced their batteries to within three hundred yards of 
the city gates. And the other batteries, those posted on the 
left bank at Pont Maugis, Noyers, Frenois, Wadelincourt, 
completing the impenetrable rampart of flame and bringing it 
around to the sovereign’s feet on his right, that had been 
spouting fire uninterruptedly for nearly twelve hours, now 
thundered more loudly still. 

But King William, to give his tired eyes a moment’s rest, 
dropped his glass to his side and continued his observations 
with unassisted vision. The sun was slanting downward to the 
woods on his left, about to set in a sky where there was not a 
cloud, and the golden light that lay upon the landscape was so 
transcendently clear and limpid that the most insignificant 
objects stood out with startling distinctness. He could almost 
count the houses in Sedan, whose windows flashed back the 
level rays of the departing day-star, and the ramparts and forti- 
fications, outlined in black against the eastern sky, had an 
unwonted aspect of frowning massiveness. Then, scattered 
among the fields to right and left, were the pretty, smiling vil- 
lages, reminding one of the toy villages that come packed in 
boxes for the little ones; to the west Donchery, seated at the 
border of her broad plain ; Douzy and Carignan to the east, 
among the meadows. Shutting in the picture to the north was 
the forest of the Ardennes, an ocean of sunlit verdure, while 
the Meuse, loitering with sluggish current through the plain 


TFTE DOWNFALL 


3^5 


with many a bend and curve, was like a stream of purest 
molten gold in that caressing light. And seen from that 
height, with the sun’s parting kiss resting on it, the horrible 
battlefield, with its blood and smoke, became an exquisite and 
highly finished miniature; the dead horsemen and disembow- 
eled steeds on the plateau of Floing were so many splashes of 
bright color; on the right, in the direction of Givonne, those 
minute black specks that whirled and eddied with such appar- 
ent lack of aim, like motes dancing in the sunshine, were the 
retreating fragments of the beaten army; while on the left a 
Bavarian battery on the peninsula of Iges, its guns the size of 
matches, might have been taken for some mechanical toy as it 
performed its evolutions with clockwork regularity. The vic- 
tory was crushing, exceeding all that the victor could have 
desired or hoped, and the King felt no remorse in presence of 
all those corpses, of those thousands of men that were as the 
dust upon the roads of that broad valley where, notwithstand- 
ing the burning of Bazeilles, the slaughter of Illy, the anguish 
of Sedan, impassive nature yet could don her gayest robe and 
put on her brightest smile as* the perfect day faded into the 
tranquil evening. 

But suddenly Delaherche descried a French officer climbing 
the steep path up the flank of la Marfee; he was a general, 
wearing a blue tunic, mounted on a black horse, and preceded 
by a hussar bearing a white flag. It was General Reille, whom 
the Emperor had entrusted with this communication for the 
King of Prussia : “My brother, as it has been denied me to 
die at the head of my army, all that is left me is to surrender 
my sword to Your Majesty. I am Your Majesty’s affectionate 
brother, Napoleon.” Desiring to arrest the butchery and 
being no longer master, the Emperor yielded himself a pris- 
oner, in the hope to placate the conqueror by the sacrifice. 
And Delaherche saw General Reille rein up his charger and 
dismount at ten paces from the King, then advance and deliver 
his letter; he was unarmed and merely carried a riding whip. 
The sun was setting in a flood of rosy light; the King seated 
himself on a chair in the midst of a grassy open space, and 
resting his hand on the back of another chair that was held in 
place by a secretary, replied that he accepted the sword and 
would await the appearance of an officer empowered to settle 
the terms of the capitulation. 


3i6 


^HE DOWNFALL 


VII. 

A S when the ice breaks up and the great cakes come crash- 
ing, grinding down upon the bosom of the swollen stream, 
carrying away all before them, so now, from every position 
about Sedan that had been wrested from the French, from 
Floing and the plateau of Illy, from the wood of da Garenne, 
the valley of la Givonne and the Bazeilles road, the stampede 
commenced; a mad torrent of horses, guns, and affrighted men 
came pouring toward the city. It was a most unfortunate 
inspiration that brought the army under the walls of that forti- 
fied place. There was too much in the way of temptation 
there; the shelter that it afforded the skulker and the deserter, 
the assurance of safety that even the bravest beheld behind 
its ramparts, entailed widespread panic and demoralization. 
Down there behind those protecting walls, so everyone imag- 
ined, was safety from that terrible artillery that had been blaz- 
ing without intermission for near twelve hours; duty, manhood, 
reason were all lost sight of; the man disappeared and w'as 
succeeded by the brute, and their fierce instinct sent them 
racing wildly for shelter, seeking a place where they might hide 
their head and lie down and sleep. 

When Maurice, bathing Jean’s face with cool water behind 
the shelter of their bit of wall, saw his friend open his eyes 
once more, he uttered an exclamation of delight. 

“Ah, poor old chap, I was beginning to fear you were done 
for! And don’t think I say it to find fault, but really you are 
not so light as you were when you were a boy.” 

It seemed to Jean, in his still dazed condition, that he was 
awaking from some unpleasant dream. Then his recollection 
returned to him slowly, and two big tears rolled down his 
cheeks. To think that little Maurice, so frail and slender, 
whom he had loved and petted like a child, should have found 
strength to lug him all that distance! 

“Let’s see what damage your knowledge-box has sus- 
tained.” 

The wound was not serious; the bullet had plowed its way 
through the scalp and considerable blood had flowed. The 
hair, which was now matted with the coagulated gore, had 
served to stanch the current, therefore Maurice refrained from 
applying water to the hurt, so as not to cause it to bleed afresh. 
“There, you look a little more like a civilized being, now 


THE DOWNFALL 


317 


that you have a clean face on you. Let’s see if I can find 
something for you to wear on your head.” And picking up 
the Mpt of a soldier who lay dead not far away, he tenderly 
adjusted it on his comrade. “It fits you to a T. Now if you 
can only walk everyone will say we are a very good-looking 
couple.” 

Jean got on his legs and gave his head a shake to assure him- 
self it was secure. It seemed a little heavier than usual, that 
was all; he thought he should get along well enough. A great 
wave of tenderness swept through his simple soul; he caught 
Maurice in his arms and hugged him to his bosom, while all 
he could find to say was: 

“Ah! dear boy, dear boy!” 

But the Prussians were drawing near : it would not answer to 
loiter behind the wall. Already Lieutenant Rochas, with what 
few men were left him, was retreating, guarding the flag, which 
the sous-lieutenant still carried under his arm, rolled around 
the staff. Lapoulle’s great height enabled him to fire an occa- 
sional shot at the advancing enemy over the coping of the wall, 
while Pache had slung his chassepot across his shoulder by the 
strap, doubtless considering that he had done a fair day’s 
work and it was time to eat and sleep. Maurice and Jean, 
stooping until they were bent almost double, hastened to rejoin 
them. There was no scarcity of muskets and ammunition; all 
they had to do was stoop and pick them up. They equipped 
themselves afresh, having left everything behind, knapsacks 
included, when one lugged the other out of danger on his 
shoulders. The wall extended to the wood of la Garenne, and 
the little band, believing that now their safety was assured, 
made a rush for the protection afforded by some farm build- 
ings, whence they readily gained the shelter of the trees. 

“Ah!” said Rochas, drawing a long breath, “we will remain 
here a moment and get our wind before we resume the offen- 
sive.” No adversity could shake his unwavering faith. 

They had not advanced many steps before all felt that they 
were entering the valley of death, but it was useless to think of 
retracing their steps; their only line of retreat lay through the 
wood, and cross it they must, at every hazard. At that time, 
instead of la Garenne, its more fitting name would have been 
the wood of despair and death ; the Prussians, knowing that 
the French troops were retiring in that direction, were riddling 
it with artillery and musketry. Its shattered branches tossed 
and groaned as if enduring the scourging of a mighty tempest. 


3i8 


THE DOWNFALL 


The shells hewed down the stalwart trees, the bullets brought 
the leaves fluttering to the earth in showers; wailing voices 
seemed to issue from the cleft trunks, sobs accompanied the 
little twigs as they fell bleeding from the parent stem. It 
might have been taken for the agony of some vast multitude, 
held there in chains and unable to flee under the pelting of 
that pitiless iron hail; the shrieks, the terror of thousands of 
creatures rooted to the ground. Never was anguish so 
poignant as of that bombarded forest. 

Maurice and Jean, who by this time had caught up with their 
companions, were greatly alarmed. The wood where they 
then were was a growth of large trees, and there was no obsta- 
cle to their running, but the bullets came whistling about their 
ears from every direction, making it impossible for them to 
avail themselves of the shelter of the trunks. Two men were 
killed, one of them struck in the back, the other in front. A 
venerable oak, directly in Maurice’s path, had its trunk shat- 
tered by a shell, and sank, with the stately grace of a mailed 
paladin, carrying down all before it, and even as the young 
man was leaping back the top of a gigantic ash on his left, 
struck by another shell, came crashing to the ground like some 
tall cathedral spire. Where could they fly? whither bend their 
steps? Everywhere the branches were failing; it was as one 
who should endeavor to fly from some vast edifice menaced 
with destruction, only to find himself in each room he enters 
in succession confronted with crumbling walls and ceilings. 
And .when, in order to escape being crushed by the big trees, 
they took refuge in a thicket of bushes, Jean came near being 
killed by a projectile, only it fortunately failed to explode. 
They could no longer make any progress now on account of 
the dense growth of the shrubbery; the supple branches caught 
them around the shoulders, the rank, tough grass held them by 
the ankles, impenetrable walls of brambles rose before them 
and blocked their way, while all the time the foliage was flut- 
tering down about them, clipped by the gigantic scythe that 
was mowing down the wood. Another man was struck dead 
beside them by a bullet in the forehead, and he retained his 
erect position, caught in some vines between two small birch 
trees. Twenty times, while they were prisoners in that thicket, 
did they feel death hovering over them. 

“Holy Virgin!’’ said Maurice, “we shall never get out of 
this alive.’’ 

His face was ashy pale, he was shivering again with terror. 


THE DOW HE ALL 


319 

and Jean, always so brave, who had cheered and comforted 
hirii that morning, he, also, was very white and felt a strange, 
chill sensation creeping down his spine. It was fear, horrible, 
contagious, irresistible fear. Again they were conscious of a 
consuming thirst, an intolerable dryness of the mouth, a con- 
traction of the throat, painful as if someone were choking them. 
These symptoms were accompanied by nausea and qualms at 
the pit of the stomach, while maleficent goblins kept punctur- 
ing their aguish, trembling legs with needles. Another of the 
physical effects of their fear was that in the congested condi- 
tion of the blood vessels of the retina they beheld thousands 
upon thousands of small black specks flitting past them, as if 
it had been possible to distinguish the flying bullets. 

“Confound the luck!” Jean stammered. “It is not worth 
speaking of, but it’s vexatious all the. same, to be here getting 
one’s head broken for other folks, when those other folks are 
at home, smoking tKeir pipe in comfort.’’ 

“Yes, that’s so,’’ Maurice replied, with a wild look. “Why 
should it be I rather than someone else?” 

It was the revolt of the individual Ego, the unaltruistic 
refusal of the one to make himself a sacrifice for the benefit of 
the species. 

“And then again,’’ Jean continued, “if a fellow could but 
know the rights of the matter; if he could be sure that any 
good was to come from it all.’’ Then turning his head and 
glancing at the western sky: “Anyway, I wish that blamed sun 
would hurry up and go to roost. Perhaps they’ll stop fighting 
when it’s dark.’’ 

With no distinct idea of what o’clock it was and no means 
of measuring the flight of time, he had long been watching the 
tardy declination of the fiery disk, which seemed to him to have 
ceased to move, hanging there in the heavens over the woods 
of the left bank. And this was not owing to any lack of cour- 
age on his part; it was simply the overmastering, ever increas- 
ing desire, amounting to an imperious necessity, to be relieved 
from the screaming and whistling of those projectiles, to run 
away somewhere and find a hole where he might hide his head 
and lose himself in oblivion. Were it not for the feeling of 
shame that is implanted in men’s breasts and keeps them from 
showing the white feather before their comrades, every one of 
them would lose his head and run, in spite of himself, like 
the veriest poltroon. 

Maurice and Jean, meanwhile, were becoming somewhat 


THE DOWMEALL 


35d 

more accustomed to their surroundings, and even when their 
terror was at its highest there came to them a sort of exalted 
self-unconsciousness that had in it something of bravery. 
They finally reached a point when they did not even hasten 
their steps as they made their way through the accursed wood. 
The horror of the bombardment was even greater than it had 
been previously among that race of sylvan denizens, killed at 
their post, struck down on every hand, like gigantic, faithful 
sentries. In the delicious twilight that reigned, golden-green, 
beneath their umbrageous branches, among the mysterious 
recesses of romantic, moss-carpeted retreats. Death showed his 
ill-favored, grinning face. The solitary fountains were con- 
taminated; men fell dead in distant nooks whose depths had 
hitherto been trod by none save wandering lovers. A bullet 
pierced a man’s chest; he had time to utter the one word: 
“hit!” and fell forward on his face, stone dead. Upon the 
lips of another, who had botk legs broken by a shell, the gay 
laugh remained; unconscious of his hurt, he supposed he had 
tripped over a root. Others, injured mortally, would run on 
for some yards, jesting and conversing, until suddenly they 
went down like a log in the supreme conyulsion. The severest 
wounds were hardly felt at the moment they were received; it 
was only at a later period that the terrible suffering com- 
menced, venting itself in shrieks and hot tears. 

Ah, that accursed wood, that wood of slaughter and despair, 
where, amid the sobbing of the expiring trees, arose by degrees 
and swelled the agonized clamor of wounded men. Maurice 
and Jean saw a zouave, nearly disemboweled, propped against 
the trunk of an oak, who kept up a most terrific howling, with- 
out a moment’s intermission. A little way beyond another 
man was actually being slowly roasted; his clothing had taken 
fire and the flames had run up and caught his beard, while he, 
paralyzed by a shot that had broken his back, was silently 
weeping scalding tears. Then there was a captain, who, one 
arm torn from its socket and his flank laid open to the thigh, 
was writhing on the ground in agony unspeakable, beseeching, 
in heartrending accents, the by-passers to end his suffering. 
There were others, and others, and others still, whose torments 
may not be described, strewing the grass-grown paths in such 
numbers that the utmost caution was required to avoid tread- 
ing them under foot. But the dead and wounded has ceased 
to count; the comrade who fell by the way was abandoned to 
his fate, forgotten as if he had never been. No one turned to 


THE DOWNFALL 


321 


look behind. It was his destiny, poor devil! Next it would be 
someone else, themselves, perhaps. 

They were approaching the edge of the wood* when a cry of 
distress was heard behind them. 

“Help! help!” 

It was the subaltern standard-bearer, who had been shot 
through the left lung. He had fallen, the blood pouring in a 
stream from his mouth, and as no one heeded his appeal he 
collected his fast ebbing strength for another effort: 

“To the colors!” 

Rochas turned and in a single bound was at his side. He 
took the flag, the staff of which had been broken in the fall, 
while the young officer murmured in words that were choked 
by the bubbling tide of blood and froth: 

“Never mind me; I am a goner. Save the flag!” 

And they left him to himself in that charming woodland 
glade to writhe in protracted agony upon the ground, tear- 
ing up the grass with his stiffening fingers and praying for 
death, which would be hours yet ere it came to end his 
misery. 

At last they had left the wood and its horrors behind them. 
Beside Maurice and Jean all that were left of the little band 
were Lieutenant Rochas, Lapoulle and Pache. Gaude, who 
had strayed away from his companions, presently came running 
from a thicket to rejoin them, his bugle hanging from his neck 
and thumping against his back with every step he took. It 
was a great comfort to them all to find themselves once again 
in the open country, where they could draw their breath; and 
then, too, there were no longer any whistling bullets and crash- 
ing shells to harass them; the firing had ceased on this side of 
the valley. 

The first object they set eyes on was an officer who had 
reined in his smoking, steaming charger before a farm-yard gate 
and was venting his towering rage in a volley of Billingsgate. 
It was General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, the commander of their 
brigade, covered with dust and looking as if he was about to 
tumble from his horse with fatigue. The chagrin on his gross, 
high-colored, animal face told how deeply he took to heart the 
disaster that he regarded in the light of a personal misfortune. 
His command had seen nothing of him since morning. Doubt- 
less he was somewhere on the battlefield, striving to rally the 
remnants of his brigade, for he was not the man to look closely 
to his own safety in his rage against those Prussian batteries 


322 


THE DOWNFALL 


that had at the same time destroyed the empire and the for- 
tunes of a rising officer, the favorite of the Tuileries. 

Tonnerre de Dieu / ” he shouted, “is there no one of whom 
one can ask a question in this d — d country?” 

The farmer’s people had apparently taken to the woods. 
At last a very old woman appeared at the door, some servant 
who had been forgotten, or whose feeble legs had compelled 
her to remain behind. 

“Hallo, old lady, come here! Which way from here is 
Belgium?” 

She looked at him stupidly, as one who failed to catch his 
meaning. Then he lost all control of himself and effervesced, 
forgetful that the woman was only a poor peasant, bellowing 
that he had no idea of going back to Sedan to be caught like a 
rat in a trap; not he! he was going to make tracks for foreign 
parts, he was, and d — d quick, too! Some soldiers had 
come up and stood listening. 

“But you won’t get through, General,” spoke up a sergeant; 
“the Prussians are everywhere. This morning was the time 
for you to cut stick.” 

There were stories even then in circulation of companies that 
had become separated from their regiments and crossed the 
frontier without any intention of doing so, and of others that, 
later in the day, had succeeded in breaking through the ene- 
my’s lines before the armies had effected their final junction. 

The general shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “What, 
with a few daring fellows of your stripe, do you mean to say 
we couldn’t go where we please? I think I can find fifty dare- 
devils to risk their skin in the attempt.” Then, turning again 
to the old peasant: ''Eh! you old mummy, answer, will you, 
in the devil’s name! where is the frontier?” 

She understood him this time. She extended her skinny 
arm in the direction of the forest. 

“That way, that way!” 

“Eh? What’s that you say? Those houses that we see 
down there, at the end of the field?” 

“Oh! farther, much farther. Down yonder, away down 
yonder! ” 

The general seemed as if his anger must suffocate him. “It 
is too disgusting, an infernal country like this! one can make 
neither top nor tail of it. There was Belgium, right under our 
nose; we were all afraid we should put our foot in it without 
knowing it; and now that one wants to go there it is some- 


THE DOWNFALL 


323 


where else. No, no! it is too much; I’ve had enough of it; 
let them take me prisoner if they will, let them do what they 
choose with me; 1 am going to bed!” And clapping spurs to 
his horse, bobbing up and down on his saddle like an inflated 
wine skin, he galloped off toward Sedan. 

A winding path conducted the party down into the Fond de 
Givonne, an outskirt of the city lying between two hills, where 
the single village street, running north and south and sloping 
gently upward toward the forest, was lined with gardens and 
modest houses. This street was just then so obstructed by 
flying soldiers that Lieutenant Rochas, with Pache, Lapoulle, 
and Gaude, found himself caught in the throng and unable for 
the moment to move in either direction. Maurice and Jean 
had some difficulty in rejoining them ; and all were surprised to 
hear themselves hailed by a husky, drunken voice, proceeding 
from the tavern on the corner, near which they were blockaded. 

“My stars, if here ain’t the gang! Hallo, boys, how are 
you? My stars. I’m glad to see you !” 

They turned, and recognized Chouteau, leaning from a win- 
dow of the ground floor of the inn. He seemed to be very 
drunk, and went on, interspersing his speech with hiccoughs: 

“Say, fellows, don’t stand on ceremony if you’re thirsty. 
There’s enough left for the comrades.” He turned unsteadily 
and called to someone who was invisible within the room : 
“Come here, you lazybones. Give these gentlemen something 
to drink ” 

Loubet appeared in turn, advancing with a flourish and 
holding aloft in either hand a full bottle, which he waved above 
his head triumphantly. He was not so far gone as his com- 
panion; with his Parisian blague^ imitating the nasal drawl of 
the coco-venders of the boulevards on a public holiday, he 
cried : 

“Here you are, nice and cool, nice and cool! Who’ll have 
a drink?” 

Nothing had been seen of the precious pair since they had 
vanished under pretense of taking Sergeant Sapin into the am- 
bulance. It was sufficiently evident that since then they had 
been strolling and seeing the sights, taking care to keep out of 
the way of the shells, until finally they had brought up at this 
inn that was given over to pillage. 

Lieutenant Rochas was very angry. “Wait a bit, you scoun- 
drels, just wait, and I’ll attend to your case! deserting and 
getting drunk whil§ the rest of your company were under fire ! ” 


324 


THE DOWNFALL 


But Chouteau would have none of his reprimand. “ See here, 
you old lunatic, I want you to understand that the grade of 
lieutenant is abolished ; we are all free and equal now. Aren’t 
you satisfied with the basting the Prussians gave you to-day, 
or do you want some more?” 

The others had to restrain the lieutenant to keep him from 
assaulting the socialist. Loubet himself, dandling his bottles 
affectionately in his arms, did what he could to pour oil upon 
the troubled waters. 

“Quit that, now! what’s the use quarreling, when all men 
are brothers!” And catching sight of Lapoulle and Pache, his 
companions in the squad : “Don’t stand there like great gawks, 
you fellows! Come in here and take something to wash the 
dust out of your throats.” 

Lapoulle hesitated a moment, dimly conscious of the impro- 
priety there was in the indulgence when so many poor devils 
were in such sore distress, but he was so knocked up with 
fatigue, so terribly hungry and thirsty! He said not a word, 
but suddenly making up his mind, gave one bound and landed 
in the room, pushing before him Pache, who, equally silent, 
yielded to the temptation he had not strength to resist. And 
they were seen no more. 

“The infernal scoundrels!” muttered .Rochas. “They 
deserve to be shot, every mother’s son of them! ” 

He had now remaining with him of his party only Jean, 
Maurice, and Gaude, and all four of them, notwithstanding 
their resistance, were gradually involved and swallowed up in 
the torrent of stragglers and fugitives that streamed along the 
road, filling its whole width from ditch to ditch. Soon they 
were at a distance from the inn. It was the routed army roll- 
ing down upon the ramparts of Sedan, a roily, roaring flood, 
such as the disintegrated mass of earth and boulders that the 
storm, scouring the mountainside, sweeps down into the valley. 
From all the surrounding plateaus, down every slope, up every 
narrow gorge, by the Floing road, by Pierremont, by the ceme- 
tery, by the Champ de Mars, as well as through the Fond de 
Givonne, the same sorry rabble was streaming cityward in 
panic haste, and every instant brought fresh accessions to its 
numbers. And who could reproach those wretched men, who, 
for twelve long, mortal hours, had stood in motionless array 
under the murderous artillery of an invisible enemy, against 
whom they could do nothing? The batteries now were play- 
ing bn them from front, flank, and rear ; as they drew nearer 


THE DOWNFALL 


325 


the city they presented a fairer mark for the convergent fire; 
the guns dealt death and destruction out by wholesale on that 
dense, struggling mass of men in that accursed hole, where 
there was no escape from the bursting shells. Some regiments 
of the 7th corps, more particularly those that had been sta- 
tioned about Floing, had left the field in tolerably good order, 
but in the Fond de Givonne there was no longer either organ- 
ization or command; the troops were a pushing, struggling 
mob, composed of debris from regiments of every description, 
zouaves, turcos, chasseurs, infantry of the line, most of them 
without arms, their uniforms soiled and torn, with grimy 
hands, blackened faces, bloodshot eyes starting from their 
sockets and lips swollen and distorted from their yells of fear 
or rage. At times a riderless horse would dash through the 
throng, overturning those who were in his path and leaving 
behind him a long wake of consternation. Then some guns 
went thundering by at breakneck speed, a retreating battery 
abandoned by its officers, and the drivers, as if drunk, rode 
down everything and everyone, giving no word of warning. 
And still the shuffling tramp of many feet along the dusty 
road went on and ceased not, the close-compacted column 
pressed on, breast to back, side to side; a retreat en ina^se^ 
where vacancies in the ranks were filled as soon as made, all 
moved by one common impulse, to reach the shelter that lay 
before them and be behind a wall. 

Again Jean raised his head and gave an anxious glance 
toward the west; through the dense clouds of dust raised by 
the tramp of that great multitude the luminary still poured his 
scorching rays down upon the exhausted men. The sunset 
was magnificent, the heavens transparently, beautifully blue. 

“It’s a nuisance, all the same,” he muttered, “that plaguey 
sun that stays up there and won’t go to roost!” 

Suddenly Maurice became aware of the presence of a young 
woman whom the movement of the resistless throng had 
jammed against a wall and who was in danger of being injured, 
and on looking more attentively was astounded to recognize in 
her his sister Henriette. For near a minute he stood gazing at 
her in open-mouthed amazement, and finally it was she who 
spoke, without any appearance of surprise, as if she found the 
meeting entirely natural. 

“They shot him at Bazeilles — and I was there. Then, in 
the hope that they might at least let roe have his body, I had 
an idea ■” 


326 


THE DOWNFALL 


She did not mention either Weiss or the Prussians by name; 
it seemed to her that everyone must understand. Maurice did 
understand. It made his heart bleed; he gave a great sob. 

“My poor darling!” 

When, about two o’clock, Henriette recovered conscious- 
ness, she found herself at Balan, in the kitchen of some people 
who were strangers to her, her head resting on a table, 
weeping. Almost immediately, however, she dried her tears; 
already the heroic element was reasserting itself in that silent 
woman, so frail, so gentle, yet of a spirit so indomitable that 
she could suffer martyrdom for the faith, or the love, that was 
in her. She knew not fear; her quiet, undemonstrative courage 
was lofty and invincible. When her distress was deepest she 
had summoned up her resolution, devoting her reflections to 
how she might recover her husband’s body, so as to give it 
decent burial. Her first project was neither more nor less 
than to make her way back to Bazeilles, but everyone advised 
her against this course, assuring her that it would be absolutely 
impossible to get through the German lines. She therefore 
abandoned the idea, and tried to think of someone among her 
acquaintance who would afford her the protection of his com- 
pa*ny, or at least assist her in the necessary preliminaries. 
The person to whom she determined she would apply was a 
M. Dubreuil, a cousin of hers, who had been assistant super- 
intendent of the refinery at Chene at the time her husband was 
employed there; Weiss had been a favorite of his ; he would 
not refuse her his assistance. Since the time, now two years 
ago, when his wife had inherited a handsome fortune, he had 
been occupying a pretty villa, called the Hermitage, the ter- 
races of which could be seen skirting the hillside of a suburb 
of Sedan, on the further side of the Fond de Givonne. And 
thus it was toward the Hermitage that she was now bending 
her steps, compelled at every moment to pause before some 
fresh obstacle, continually menaced with being knocked down 
and trampled to death. 

Maurice, to whom she briefly .explained her project, gave it 
his approval. 

“Cousin Dubreuil has always been a good friend to us. He 
will be of service to you.” 

Then an idea of another nature occurred to him. Lieuten- 
ant Rochas was greatly embarrassed as to what disposition he 
should make of the flag. They all were firmly resolved to save 
it — to do anything rather than allpw it to fall into the bands of 


THE DOWN-FALL 


327 


the Prussians. It had been suggested to cut it into pieces, of 
which each should carry one off under his shirt, or else to bury 
it at the foot of a tree, so noting the locality in memory that they 
might be able to come and disinter it at some future day; but 
the idea of mutilating the flag, or burying it like a corpse, 
affected them too painfully, and they were considering if they 
might not preserve it in some other manner. When Maurice, 
therefore, proposed to entrust the standard to a reliable person 
who would conceal it and, in case of necessity, defend it, until 
such day as he should restore it to them intact, they all gave 
their assent. 

“Come,” said the young man, addressing his sister, “we 
will go with you to the Hermitage and see if Dubreuil is there. 
Besides, I do not wish to leave you without protection.” 

It was no easy matter to extricate themselves from the press, 
but they succeeded finally and entered a path that led upward 
on their left. They soon found themselves in a region inter- 
sected by a perfect labyrinth of lanes and narrow passages, 
a district where truck farms and gardens predominated, inter- 
spersed with an occasional villa and small holdings of 
extremely irregular outline, and these lanes and passages 
wound circuitously between blank walls, turning sharp corners 
at every few steps and bringing up abruptly in the cul-de-sac of 
some courtyard, affording admirable facilities for carrying on 
a guerilla warfare; there were spots where ten men might 
defend themselves for hours against a regiment. Desultory 
firing was already beginning to be heard, for the suburb com- 
manded Balan, and the Bavarians were already coming up on 
the other side of the valley. 

When Maurice and Henriette, who were in the rear of the 
others, had turned once to the left, then to the right and then 
to the left again, following the course of two interminable walls, 
they suddenly came out before the Hermitage, the door of 
which stood wide open. The grounds, at the top of which 
was a small park, were terraced off in three broad terraces, on 
one of which stood the residence, a roomy, rectangular struc- 
ture, approached by an avenue of venerable elms. Facing it, 
and separated from it by the deep, narrow valley, with its 
steeply sloping banks, were other similar country seats, backed 
by a wood. 

Henriette’s anxiety was aroused at sight of the open door. 
“They are not at home,” she said; “they must have gone 
away. ’ ’ 


328 


THE DOWNFALL 


The truth was that Dubreuil had decided the day before tO 
take his wife and children to Bouillon, where they would be in 
safety from the disaster he felt was impending. And yet the 
house was not unoccupied ; even at a distance and through 
the intervening trees the approaching party were conscious of 
movements going on within its walls. As the young woman 
advanced into the avenue she recoiled before the dead body of 
a Prussian soldier. 

“The devil!” exclaimed Rochas; “so they have already 
been exchanging civilities in this quarter!” 

Then all hands, desiring to ascertain what was going on, 
hurried forward to the house, and there their curiosity was 
quickly gratified; the doors and windows of the rez-de-chaussU 
had been smashed in with musket-butts and the yawning 
apertures disclosed the destruction that the marauders had 
wrought in the rooms within, while on the graveled terrace lay 
various articles of furniture that had been hurled from the 
stoop. Particularly noticeable was a drawing-room suite in 
sky-blue satin, its sofa and twelve fauteuils piled in dire con- 
fusion, helter-skelter, on and around a great center table, the 
marble top of which was broken in twain. And there were 
zouaves, chasseurs, liners, and men of the infanterie de marine 
running to and fro excitedly behind the buildings and in the 
alleys, discharging their pieces into the little wood that faced 
them across the valley. 

“Lieutenant,” a zouave said to Rochas, by way of explana- 
tion, “we found a pack of those dirty Prussian hounds here, 
smashing things and raising Cain generally. We settled their 
hash for them, as you can see for yourself; only they will be 
coming back here presently, ten to our one, and that won’t be 
so pleasant.” 

Three other corpses of Prussian soldiers were stretched upon 
the terrace. As Henriette was looking at them absently, her 
thoughts doubtless far away with her husband, who, amid the 
blood and ashes of Bazeilles, was also sleeping his last sleep, a 
bullet whistled close to her head and struck a tree that stood 
behind her. Jean sprang forward. 

“Madame, don’t stay there. Go inside the house, quick, 
quick!” 

His heart overflowed with pity as he beheld the change her 
terrible affliction had wrought in her, and he recalled her image 
as she had appeared to him only the day before, her face bright 
with the kindly smile of the happy, loving wife. At first he 


the downfall 


329 

had found no word to say to her, hardly knowing even if she 
would recognize him. He felt that he could gladly give his 
life, if that would serve to restore her peace of mind. 

Go inside, and don’t come out. At the first sign of danger 
we will come for you, and we will all escape together by way of 
the wood up yonder.” 

But she apathetically replied : 

“Ah, M. Jean, what is the use?” 

Her brother, however, was also urging her, and finally she 
ascended the stoop and took her position within the vestibule, 
whence her vision commanded a view of the avenue in its 
entire length. She was a spectator of the ensuing combat. 

Maurice and Jean had posted themselves behind one of the 
elms near the house. The gigantic trunks of the centenarian 
monarchs were amply sufficient to afford shelter to two men. 
A little way from them Gaude, the bugler, had joined forces 
with Lieutenant Rochas, who, unwilling to confide the flag to 
other hands, had rested it against the tree at his side while he 
handled his musket. And every trunk had its defenders; 
from end to end the avenue was lined with men covered, 
Indian fashion, by the trees, who only exposed their head 
when ready to fire. 

In the wood across the valley the Prussians appeared to be 
receiving re-enforcements, for their fire gradually grew warmer. 
There was no one to be seen ; at most, the swiftly vanishing 
form now and then of a man changing his position. A villa, 
with green shutters, was occupied by their sharpshooters, who 
fired from the half-open windows of the rez-de-chaussie. It 
was about four o’clock, and the noise of the cannonade in the 
distance was diminishing, the guns were being silenced one by 
one; and there they were, French and Prussians, in that out- 
of-the-way corner whence they could not see the white flag 
floating over the citadel, still engaged in the work of mutual 
slaughter, as if their quarrel had been a personal one. Not- 
withstanding the armistice there were many such points where 
the battle continued to rage until it was too dark to see; the 
rattle of musketry was heard in the faubourg of the Fond de 
Givonne and in the gardens of Petit-Pont long after it had 
ceased elsewhere. 

For a quarter of an hour the bullets flew thick and fast from 
one side of the valley to the other. Now and again someone 
who was so incautious as to expose himself went down with a 
ball in his head or chest. There were three men lying dead in 


THE DOWNFALL 


330 

the avenue. The rattling in the throat of another man who 
had fallen prone upon his face was something horrible to listen 
to, and no one thought to go and turn him on his back to ease 
his dying agony. Jean, who happened to look around just at 
that moment, beheld Henriette glide tranquilly down the steps, 
approach the wounded man and turn him over, then slip a 
knapsack beneath his head by way of pillow. He ran and 
seized her and forcibly brought her back behind the tree 
where he and Maurice were posted. 

“Do you wish to be killed?" 

She appeared to be entirely unconscious of the danger to 
which she had exposed herself. 

“Why, no — but I am afraid to remain in that house, all 
alone. I would rather be outside." 

And so she stayed with them. They seated her on the 
ground at their feet, against the trunk of the tree, and went on 
expending the few cartridges that were left them, blazing away 
to right and left, with such fury that they quite forgot their 
sensations of fear and fatigue. They were utterly unconscious 
of what was going on around them, acting mechanically, with 
but one end in view; even the instinct of self-preservation had 
deserted them. 

“Look, Maurice," suddenly said Henriette; “that dead 
soldier there before us, does he not belong to the Prussian 
Guard?" 

She had been eying attentively for the past minute or two 
one of the dead bodies^hat the enemy had left behind them 
when they retreated, a short, thick-set young man, with big 
mustaches, lying upon his side on the gravel of the terrace. 

The chin-strap had broken, releasing the spiked helmet, 
which had rolled away a few steps. And it was indisputable 
that the body was attired in the uniform of the Guard; the 
dark gray trousers, the blue tunic with white facings, the great- 
coat rolled and worn, belt-wise, across the shoulder. 

“It is the Guard uniform," she said; “lam quite certain of 
it. It is exactly lik^ the colored plate I have at home, and 

then the photograph that Cousin Gunther sent us " She 

stopped suddenly, and with her unconcerned, fearless air, 
before anyone could make a motion to detain her, walked up 
to the corpse, bent down and read the number of the regiment. 
“Ah, the Forty-third!" she exclaimed. “I knew it." 

And she returned to her position, while a storm of bullets 
whistled around her ears. “Yes, the Forty-third; Cousin 


the downfall 


331 

Gunther’s regiment — something told me it must be so. Ah! 
if my poor husband were only here!” 

Aherthat all Jean’s and Maurice’s entreaties were ineffectual 
to make her keep quiet. She was feverishly restless, con- 
stantly protruding her head to peer into the opposite wood, 
evidently harassed by some anxiety that preyed upon her 
mind. Her companions continued to load and fire with the 
same blind fury, pushing her back with their knee whenever 
she exposed herself too rashly. It looked as if the Prussians 
were beginning to consider that their numbers would warrant 
them in attacking, for they showed themselves more frequently 
and there were evidences of preparations going on behind the 
trees. They were suffering severely, however, from the fire of 
the French, whose bullets at that short range rarely failed to 
bring down their man. 

“That may be your cousin,” said Jean. “Look, that officer 
over there, who has just come out of the house with the green 
shutters.” 

He was a captain, as could be seen by the gold braid on the 
collar of his tunic and the golden eagle on his helmet that 
flashed back the level ray of the setting sun. He had dis- 
carded his epaulettes, and carrying his saber in his right hand, 
was shouting an order in a sharp, imperative voice; and the 
distance between them was so small, a scant two hundred 
yards, that every detail of his trim, slender figure was plainly 
discernible, as well as the pinkish, stern face and slight blond 
mustache. 

Henriette scrutinized him with attentive eyes. “It is he,” 
she replied, apparently unsurprised. ‘T recognize him per- 
fectly.” 

With a look of concentrated rage Maurice drew his piece to 

his shoulder and covered him. “The cousin Ah! sure 

as there is a God in heaven he shall pay for Weiss.” 

But, quivering with excitement, she jumped to her feet and 
knocked up the weapon, whose charge was wasted on the air. 

“Stop, stop! we must not kill acquaintances, relatives! It 
is too barbarous.” 

And, all her womanly instincts coming back to her, she sank 
down behind the tree and gave way to a fit of violent weep- 
ing. The horror of it all was too much for her; in her great 
dread and sorrow she was forgetful of all beside. 

Rochas, meantime, was in his element. He had excited 
the few zouaves and other troops around him to such a pitch 


33 ^ 


THE DOWNFALL 


of frenzy, their lire had become so murderously effective at 
sight of the Prussians, that the latter first wavered and then 
retreated to the shelter of their wood. 

“Stand your ground, my boys! don’t give way an inch!- 
Aha, see !em run, the cowards! we’ll' fix their flint for ’em!” 

He vwas in high spirits and seemed to have recovered all his 
unbotinded confidence, certain that victory was yet to crown 
ffheir efforts. There had been no defeat. The handful of 
men before him stood in his eyes for the united armies of Ger- 
many, and he was going to destroy them at his leisure. All his 
long, lean form, all his thin, bony face, where the huge nose 
curved down upon the self-willed, sensual mouth, exhaled a 
laughing, vain-glorious satisfaction, the joy of the conquering 
trooper who goes through the world with his sweetheart on his 
.arm ajid a bottle of good wine in his hand. 

"'Parbleu^ my children, what are we here for, I’d like to 
know, if not to lick ’em out of their boots? and that’s the way 
this affair is going to end, just mark my words. We shouldn’t 
-know ourselves any longer if we should let ourselves be beaten. 
Beaten! come, come, that is too good! When the neighbors 
tread on our toes, or when we feel we are beginning to grow 
rusty for want of something to do, we just turn to and give ’em 
;a thrashing; that’s all there is to it. Come, boys, let ’em have 
sit once more, and you’ll see ’em run like so many jack- 
jrabbits!” 

He bellowed and gesticulated like a lunatic, and was such a 
good fellow withal in the comforting illusion of his ignorance 
that the men were inoculated with his confidence. He sud- 
denly broke out again: 

“And we’ll kick ’em, we’ll kick ’em, we’ll kick ’em to the 
frontier! Victory, victory!” 

But at that juncture, just as the enemy across the valley 
seemed really to be falling back, a hot fire of musketry 
came pouring in on them from the left. It was a repetition of 
the everlasting flanking movement that had done the Prussians 
such good service; a strong detachment of the Guards had 
crept around toward the French rear through the Fond de 
Givonne. It was useless to think of holding the position 
longer; the little band of men who were defending the terraces 
were caught between two fires and menaced with being cut off 
from Sedan. Men fell on every side, and for a moment the 
confusion was extreme; the Prussians were already scaling the 
wall of the park, and advancing along the pathways. Some 


THE DOWNEALL 


333 


zouaves rushed forward to repel them, and there was a fierce 
hand-to-hand struggle with the bayonet. There was one 
zouave, a big, handsome, brown-bearded man, bare-headed 
and with his jacket hanging in tatters from his shoulders, who 
did his work with appalling thoroughness, driving his reeking 
bayonet home through splintering bones and yielding tissues, 
cleansing it of the gore that it had contracted from one man by 
plunging it into the flesh of another; and when it broke he 
laid about him, smashing many a skull, with the butt of his 
musket; and when finally he made a misstep and lost his 
weapon he sprung, bare-handed, for the throat of a burly 
Prussian, with such tigerish fierceness that both men rolled 
over and over on the gravel to the shattered kitchen door, 
clasped in a mortal embrace. The trees of the park looked 
down on many such scenes of slaughter, and the green lawn 
was piled with corpses. But it was before the stoop, around 
the sky-blue sofa and fauteuils, that the conflict raged with 
greatest fury; a maddened mob of savages, firing at one 
another at point-blank range, so that hair and beards were set 
on fire, tearing one another with teeth and nails when a knife 
was wanting to slash the adversary’s throat. 

Then Gaude, with his sorrowful face, the face of a man whoi 
has had his troubles of which he does not care to speak, was. 
seized with a sort of sudden heroic madness. At that moment 
of irretrievable defeat, when he must have known that the com- 
pany was annihilated and that there was not a man left to 
answer his summons, he grasped his bugle, carried it to his 
lips and sounded the general, in so tempestuous, ear-splitting 
strains that one would have said he wished to wake the dead. 
Nearer and nearer came the Prussians, but he never stirred, 
only sounding the call the louder, with all the strength of his 
lungs. He fell, pierced with many bullets, and his spirit 
passed in one long-dawn, parting wail that died away and was 
lost upon the shuddering air. 

Rochas made no attempt to fly; he seemed unable to com- 
prehend. Even more erect than usual, he waited the end, 
stammering: 

“Well, what’s the matter? what’s the matter?’’ 

Such a possibility had never entered his head as that they 
could be defeated. They were changing everything in these 
degenerate days, even to the manner of fighting; had not those 
fellows a right to remain on their own side of the valley and 
wait for the French to go and attack them? There was no use 


334 


THE DOVVHEALL 


killing them; as fast as they were killed more kept popping up. 
What kind of a d — d war was it, anyway, where they were 
able to collect ten men against their opponent’s one, where 
they never showed their face until evening, after blazing away 
at you all day with their artillery until you didn’t know on 
which end you were -standing? Aghast and confounded, 
having failed so far to acquire the first idea of the rationale of 
the campaign, he was dimly conscious of the existence of 
some mysterious, superior method which he could not com- 
prehend, against which he ceased to struggle, although in his 
dogged stubbornness he kept repeating mechanically: 

“Courage, my children! victory is before us!’’ 

Meanwhile he had stooped and clutched the flag. That was 
his last, his only thqught, to save the flag, retreating again, if 
necessary, so that it might not be defiled by contact with 
Prussian hands. But the staff, although it was broken, became 
entangled in his legs; he narrowly escaped falling. The 
bullets whistled past him, he felt that death was near; he 
stripped the silk from the staff and tore it into shreds, striving 
to destroy it utterly. And then it was that, stricken at once 
in the neck, chest, and legs, he sank to earth amid the bright 
tri-colored rags, as if they had been his pall. He survived a 
moment yet, gazing before him with fixed, dilated eyes, read- 
ing, perhaps, in the vision he beheld on the horizon the stern 
lesson that War conveys, the cruel, vital struggle that is to be 
accepted not otherwise than gravely, reverently, as immutable 
law. Then a slight tremor ran through his frame, and dark- 
ness succeeded to his infantine bewilderment; he passed away, 
like some poor dumb, lowly creature of a day, a joyous insect 
that mighty, impassive Nature, in her relentless fatality, has 
caught and crushed. In him died all a legend. 

When the Prussians began to draw near Jean and Maurice 
had retreated, retiring from tree to tree, face to the enemy, 
and always, as far as possible, keeping Henriette behind them. 
They did not give over firing, discharging their pieces and 
then falling back to seek a fresh cover. Maurice knew where 
there was a little wicket in the wall at the upper part of the 
park, and they w"ere so fortunate as to find it unfastened. 
With lighter hearts when they had left it behind them, they 
found themselves in a narrow by-road that wound between two 
high walls, but after following it for some distance the sound 
of firing in front caused them to turn into a path on their left. 
As luck would have it, it ended in an impasse ; they had to 


THE DOWNFALL 


335 


retrace their steps, running the gauntlet of the bullets, and 
take the turning to the right. When they came to exchange 
reminiscences in later days they could never agree on which 
road they had taken. In that tangled network of suburban 
lanes and passages there was firing still going on from every 
corner that afforded a shelter, protracted battles raged at the 
gates of farmyards, everything that could be converted into a 
barricade had its defenders, from whom the assailants tried to 
wrest it; all with the utmost fury and vindictiveness. And all 
at once they came out upon the Fond de Givonne road, not far 
from Sedan. 

For the third time Jean raised his eyes toward the western 
sky, that was all aflame with a bright, rosy light; and he heaved, 
a sigh of unspeakable relief. 

“Ah, that pig of a sun! at last he is going to bed!" 

And they ran with might and main, all three of them, never 
once stopping to draw breath. About them, filling the road 
in all its breadth, was the rear guard of fugitives from the 
battlefield, still flowing onward with the irresistible momentum 
of an unchained mountain torrent. When they came to the 
Balan gate they had a long period of waiting in the midst of 
the impatient, ungovernable throng. The chains of the draw- 
bridge had given way, and the only path across the fosse was 
by the foot-bridge, so that the guns and horses had to turn 
back and seek admission by the bridge of the chateau, where 
the jam was said to be even still more fearful. At the gate of 
la Cassine, too, people were trampled to death in their eager- 
ness to gain admittance. From all the adjacent heights the 
terror-stricken fragments of the army came tumbling into the 
city, as into a cesspool, with the hollow roar of pent-up water 
that has burst its dam. The fatal attraction of those walls 
had ended by making cowards of the bravest; men trod one 
another down in their blind haste to be under cover. 

Maurice had caught Henriette in his arms, and in a voice 
that trembled with suspense: 

“It cannot be,’’ he said, “that they will have the cruelty to 
close the gate and shut us out.’’ 

That was what the crowd feared would be done. To right 
and left, however, upon the glacis soldiers were already arrang- 
ing their bivouacs, while entire batteries, guns, caissons, and 
horses, in confusion worse confounded, had thrown themselves 
pell-mell into the fosse for safety. 

]But now shrilly impatient bugle calls rose on the evening air, 


336 


THE DOWNFALL. 


followed soon by the long-drawn strains of retreat. They 
were summoning the belated soldiers back to their coinrades, 
who came running in, singly and in groups. A dropping fire 
of musketry still continued in the faubourgs, but it was gradu- 
ally dying out. Heavy guards were stationed on the banquette 
behind the parapet to protect the approaches, and at last the 
gate was closed. The Prussians were within a hundred yards 
of the sally-port; they could be seen moving on the Balan road„ 
tranquilly establishing themselves in the houses and gardens. 

Maurice and Jean, pushing Henriette before them to protect 
her from the jostling of the throng, were among the last to 
enter Sedan. Six o’clock was striking. The artillery fire had 
ceased nearly an hour ago. Soon the distant musketry fire, 
too, was silenced. Then, to the deafening uproar, to the 
vengeful thunder that had been roaring since morning, there 
succeeded a stillness as of death. Night came, and with it 
came a boding silence, fraught with terror. 


VIII. 


T half-past five o’clock, after the closing of the gates,. 



A Delaherche, in his eager thirst for news, now that he knew 
the battle lost, had again returned to the Sous-Prefecture. 
He hung persistently about the approaches of the janitor’s, 
lodge, tramping up and down the paved courtyard with fever- 
ish impatience, for more than three hours, watching for every 
officer who came up and interviewing him, and thus it was 
that he had become acquainted, piecemeal, with the rapid 
series of events; how General de Wimpffen had tendered his 
resignation and then withdrawn it upon the peremptory refusal 
of Generals Ducrot and Douay to append their names to the 
articles of capitulation, how the Emperor had thereupon 
invested the General with full authority to proceed to the 
Prussian headquarters and treat for the surrender of the 
vanquished army on the most advantageous terms obtainable ; 
how, finally, a council of war had been convened with the 
object of deciding what possibilities there were of further pro- 
tracting the struggle successfully by the defense of the fort- 
ress. During the deliberations of this council, which con- 
sisted of some twenty officers of the highest rank and seemed 
to him as if it would never end, the cloth manufacturer 
plimbed the steps of the huge public building at least twenty 


THE DOWNFALL, 


337 


times, and at last his curiosity was gratified by beholding Gen- 
eral de WimpfiFen emerge, very red in the face and his eye-- 
lids puffed and swollen with tears, behind whom came two. 
other generals and a colonel. They leaped into the saddle* 
and rode away over the Pont de Meuse. The bells had struck 
eight some time before; the inevitable capitulation was now to^ 
be accomplished, from which there was no escape. 

Delaherche, somewhat relieved in mind by what he had' 
heard and seen, remembered that it was a long time since he: 
had tasted food and resolved to turn his steps homeward, but 
the terrific crowd that had collected since he first came made 
him pause in dismay. It is no exaggeration to say that the 
streets and squares were so congested, so thronged, so densely 
packed with horses, men, and guns, that one would have 
declared the closely compacted mass could only have been 
squeezed and wedged in there thus by the effort of some: 
gigantic mechanism. While the ramparts were occupied by 
the bivouacs of such regiments as had fallen back in good‘ 
order, the city had been invaded and submerged by an angry,, 
surging, desperate flood, the broken remnants of the various; 
corps, stragglers and fugitives from all arms of the sers'ice, and 
the dammed-up tide made it impossible for one to stir foot or 
hand. The wheels of the guns, of the caissons, and the in- 
numerable vehicles of ever}" description, had interlocked and 
were tangled in confusion worse confounded, while the poor 
horses, flogged unmercifully by their drivers and pulled, now 
in this direction, now in that, could only dance in their be- 
wilderment, unable to move a step either forward or back. 
And the men, deaf to reproaches and threats alike, forced 
their way into the houses, devoured whatever they could lay 
hafids on, flung themselves down to sleep wherever they 
could find a vacant space, it might be in the best bedroom 
or in the cellar. Many of them had fallen in doorways, 
where they blocked the vestibule; others, without strength 
to go farther, lay extended on the sidewalks and slept the 
sleep of death, not even rising when some by-passer trod on 
them and bruised an arm or leg, preferring the risk of death 
to the fatigue of changing their location. 

These things all helped to make Delaherche still more keenly 
conscious of the necessity of immediate capitulation. There 
were some quarters in which numerous caissons were packed 
so close together that they were in contact, and a single Prus- 
sian shell alighting on one of them must inevitably have 


338 


THE DOWNFALL. 


exploded them all, entailing the immediate destruction of the 
city by conflagration. Then, too, what could be accom- 
plished with such an assemblage of miserable wretches, 
deprived of all their powers, mental and physical, by reason of 
their long-endured privations, and destitute of either ammuni- 
tion or subsistence? Merely to clear the streets and reduce 
them to a condition of something like order would require a 
whole day. The place was entirely incapable of defense, 
having neither guns nor provisions. 

These were the considerations that had prevailed at the 
council among those more reasonable officers who, in the midst 
of their grief and sorrow for their country and the army, had 
retained a clear and undistorted view of the situation as it 
was; and the more hot-headed among them, those who cried 
with emotion that it was impossible for an army to surrender 
thus, had been compelled to bow their head upon their breast 
in silence and admit that they had no practicable scheme to 
offer whereby the conflict might be recommenced on the 
morrow. 

In the Place Turenne and Place du Rivage, Delaherche 
succeeded with the greatest difficulty in working his way 
through the press. As he passed the Hotel of the Golden 
Cross a sorrowful vision greeted his eyes, that of the generals 
seated in the dining room, gloomily silent, around the empty 
board; there was nothing left to eat in the house, not even 
bread. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, however, who had been 
storming and vociferating in the kitchen, appeared to have 
found something, for he suddenly held his peace and ran away 
swiftly up the stairs, holding in his hands a large paper parcel 
of a greasy aspect. Such was the crowd assembled there, to 
stare through the lighted windows upon the guests assembled 
around that famine-stricken table d'hdte^ that the manufacturer 
was obliged to make vigorous play with his elbows, and was 
frequently driven back by some wild rush of the mob and lost 
all the distance, and more, that he had just gained. In the 
Grande Rue, however, the obstacles became actually impass- 
able, and there was a moment when he was inclined to give 
up in despair; a complete battery seemed to have been driven 
in there and the guns and materiel piled, pell-mell, on top of 
one another. Deciding finally to take the bull by the horns, 
he leaped to the axle of a piece and so pursued his way, jump- 
ing from wheel to wheel, straddling the guns, at the imminent 
risk of breaking his legs, if not his neck, Afterward it was 


THE DoWHEALL. 


339 


some horses that blocked his way, and he made himself lowly 
and stooped, creeping among the feet and underneath the 
bellies of the sorry jades, who were ready to die of inanition, 
like their masters. Then, when after a quarter of an hour’s 
laborious effort he reached the junction of the Rue Saint- 
Michel, he was terrified at the prospect of the dangers and 
obstacles that he had still to face, and which, instead of dimin- 
ishing, seemed to be increasing, and made up his mind to turn 
down the street above mentioned, which would take him into 
the Rue des Laboureurs; he hoped that by taking these 
usually quiet and deserted passages he should escape the 
crowd and reach his home in safety. As luck would have it 
he almost directly came upon a house of ill-fame to which a 
band of drunken soldiers were in process of laying siege, and 
considering that a straf shot, should one reach him in the 
fracas, would be equally as unpleasant as one intended for 
him, he made haste to retrace his steps. Resolving to have 
done with it he pushed on to the end of the Grande Rue, 
now gaining a few feet by balancing himself, rope-walker fash- 
ion, along the pole of some vehicle, now climbing over an 
army wagon that barred his way. At the Place du College he 
was carried along bodily on the shoulders of the throng for a 
space of thirty paces; he fell to the ground, narrowly escaped 
a set of fractured ribs, and saved himself only by the proxim- 
ity of a friendly iron railing, by the bars of which he pulled 
himself to his feet. And when at last he reached the Rue 
Maqua, inundated with perspiration, his clothing almost torn 
from his back, he found that he had been more than an hour in 
coming from the Sous-Prefecture, a distance which in ordinary 
times he was accustomed to accomplish in less than five 
minutes. 

Major Bouroche, with the intention of keeping the ambu- 
lance and garden from being overrun with intruders, had 
caused two sentries to be mounted at the door. This measure 
was a source of great comfort to Delaherche, who had begun 
to contemplate the possibilities of his house being subjected to 
pillage. The sight of the ambulance in the garden, dimly 
lighted by a few candles and exhaling its fetid, feverish emana- 
tions, caused him a fresh constriction of the heart; then, 
stumbling over the body of a soldier who was stretched in 
slumber on the stone pavement of the walk, he supposed him 
to be one of the fugitives who had managed to find his way in 
there from outside, until, calling to mind the 7th corps treasure 


340 


THE DOWNFALL. 


that had been deposited there and the sentry who had been set 
over it, he saw how matters stood: the poor fellow, stationed 
there since early morning, had been overlooked by his supe- 
riors and had succumbed to his fatigue. Besides, the house 
seemed quite deserted ; the ground floor was black as Egypt, 
and the doors stood wide open. The servants were doubtless 
all at the ambulance, for there was no one in the kitchen, 
which was faintly illuminated by the light of a wretched little 
smoky lamp. He lit a candle and ascended the main staircase 
very softly, in order not to awaken his wife and mother, whom 
he had begged to go to bed early after a day where the stress, 
both mental and physical, had been so intense. 

On entering his study, however, he beheld a sight that 
caused his eyes to dilate with astonishment. Upon the sofa 
on which Captain Beaudoin had snatched a few hours’ repose 
the day before a soldier lay outstretched ; and he could not 
understand the reason of it until he had looked and recog- 
nized young Maurice Levasseur, Henriette’s brother. He was 
still more surprised when, on turning his head, he perceived, 
stretched on the floor and wrapped in a bed quilt, another 
soldier, that Jean, whom he had seen for a moment just before 
the battle. It was plain that the poor fellows, in their distress 
and fatigue after the conflict, not knowing where else to bestow 
themselves, had sought refuge there; they were crushed, anni- 
hilated, like dead men. He did not linger there, but pushed 
on to his wife’s chamber, which was the next room on the 
corridor. A lamp was burning on a table in a corner; the 
profound silence seemed to shudder. Gilberte had thrown 
herself crosswise on the bed, fully dressed, doubtless in order 
to be prepared for any catastrophe, and was sleeping peace- 
fully, while, seated on a chair at her side with her head 
declined and resting lightly on the very edge of the mattress, 
Henriette was also slumbering, with a fitful, agitated sleep, 
while big tears welled up beneath her swollen eyelids. He 
contemplated them silently for a moment, strongly tempted to 
awake and question the young woman in order to ascertain 
what she knew. Had she succeeded in reaching Bazeilles? and 
why was it that she was back there? Perhaps she would be 
able to give him some tidings of his dye-house were he to ask 
her? A feeling of compassion stayed him, however, and he 
was about to leave the room w^hen his mother, ghost-like, 
appeared at the threshold of the open door and beckoned him 
to follow her. 


THE DOWNFALL. 34I 

As they were passing through the dining room he expressed 
his surprise. 

“What, have you not been abed to-night?” 

She shook her head, then said below her breath: 

“I cannot sleep; I have been sitting in an easy-chair beside 
the colonel. He is very feverish; he awakes at every instant, 
almost, and then plies me with questions. I don’t know how 
to answer them. Come in and see him, you.” 

M. de Vineuil had fallen asleep again. His long face, now 
brightly red, barred by the sweeping mustache that fell across 
it like a snowy avalanche, was scarce distinguishable on the 
pillow. Mme. Delaherche had placed a newspaper before the 
lamp and that corner of the room was lost in semi-darkness, 
while all the intensity of the bright lamplight was concentrated 
on her where she sat, uncompromisingly erect, in her fauteuil, 
her hands crossed before her in her lap, her vague eyes bent 
on space, in sorrowful reverie. 

“I think he must have heard you,” she murmured; “he is 
awaking again.” 

It was so; the colonel, without moving his head, had 
reopened his eyes and bent them on Delaherche. He recog- 
nized him, and immediately asked in a voice that his exhausted 
condition made tremulous: 

“It is all over, is it not? We have capitulated.” 

The manufacturer, who encountered the look his mother 
cast on him at that moment, was on the point of equivocating. 
But what good would it do? A look of discouragement passed 
across his face. 

“What else remained to do? A single glance at the streets 
of the city would convince you. General de Wimpffen has 
just set out for Prussian general headquarters to discuss con- 
ditions.” 

M. de Vineuil’s eyes closed again, his long frame was shaken 
with a protracted shiver of supremely bitter grief, and this 
deep, long-drawn moan escaped his lips: 

“Ah! merciful God, merciful God!” And without opening 
his eyes he went on in faltering, broken accents: “Ah! the 
plan I spoke of yesterday — they should have adopted it. Yes, 
I knew the country; I spoke of my apprehensions to the gen- 
eral, but even him they would not listen to. Occupy all the 
heights up there to the north, from Saint-Menges to Fleigneux, 
with your army looking down on and commanding Sedan, 
able at any time to move on Vrigne-aux-Bois, mistress of 


34 ^ 


THE DOWNFALL. 


Saint-Albert’s pass — and there we are; our positions are 
impregnable, the Mezieres road is under our control ” 

His speech became more confused as he proceeded; he 
stammered a few more unintelligible words, while the vision of 
the battle that had been born of his fever little by little grew 
blurred and dim and at last was effaced by slumber. He 
slept, and in his sleep perhaps the honest officer’s dreams were 
dreams of victory. 

“Does the major speak favorably of his case?’’ Delaherche 
inquired in a whisper. 

Madame Delaherche nodded affirmatively 

“Those wounds in the' foot are dreadful things, though,’’ 
he went on. “I suppose he is likely to be laid up for a long 
time, isn’t he?’’ 

She made him no answer this time, as if all her being, all 
her faculties were concentrated on contemplating the great 
calamity of their defeat. She was of another age ; she was a 
survival of that strong old race, of frontier burghers who 
defended their towns so valiantly in the good days gone by. 
The clean-cut lines of her stern, set face, with its fleshless, 
uncompromising nose and thin lips, which the brilliant light 
of the lamp brought out in high relief against the darkness of 
the room, told the full extent of her stifled rage and grief and 
the wound sustained by her antique patriotism, the revolt of 
which refused even to let her sleep. 

About that time Delaherche became conscious of a sensation 
of isolation, accompanied by a most uncomfortable feeling of 
physical distress. His hunger was asserting itself again, a 
griping, intolerable hunger, and he persuaded himself that it 
was debility alone that was thus robbing him of courage and 
resolution. He tiptoed softly from the room and, with his 
candle, again made his way down to the kitchen, but the spec- 
tacle he witnessed there was even still more cheerless; the 
range cold and fireless, the closets empty, the floor strewn 
with a disorderly litter of towels, napkins, dish-clouts and 
women’s aprons; as if the hurricane of disaster had swept 
through that place as well, bearing away on its wings all the 
charm and cheer that appertain naturally to the things we eat 
and drink. At first he thought he was not going to discover so 
much as a crust, what was left over of the bread having all 
found its way to the ambulance in the form of soup. At last, 
however, in the dark corner of a cupboard he came across 
the remainder of the beans from yesterday’s dinner, where 


THE DOWNFALL. 


343 


they had been forgotten, and ate them. He accomplished his 
luxurious repast without the formality of sitting down, without / 
the accompaniment of salt and butter, for which he did noff^ 
care to trouble himself to ascend to the floor above, desirous 
only to get away as speedily as possible from that dismal 
kitchen, where the blinking, smoking little lamp perfumed the 
air with fumes of petroleum. 

It was not much more than ten o’clock, and Delaherche had 
no other occupation than to speculate on the various proba- 
bilities connected with the signing of the capitulation. A per- 
sistent apprehension haunted him; a dread lest the conflict 
might be renewed, and the horrible thought of what the con- 
sequences must be in such an event, of which he could not 
speak, but which rested on his bosom like an incubus. When 
he had reascended to his study, where he found Maurice and 
Jean in exactly the same position he had left them in, it was 
all in vain that he settled himself comfortably in his favorite 
easy-chair; sleep would not come to him; just as he was on the 
point of losing himself the crash of a shell would arouse him 
with a great start. It was the frightful cannonade of the day, 
the echoes of which were still ringing in his ears; and be 
would listen breathlessly for a moment, then sit and shudder at 
the equally appalling silence by which he was now surrounded. 

As he could not sleep he preferred to move about; he wan- 
dered aimlessly among the rooms, taking care to avoid that in 
which his mother was sitting by the colonel’s bedside, for the 
steady gaze with which she watched him as he tramped nerv- 
ously up and down had finally had the effect of disconcerting 
him. Twice he returned to see if Henriette had not awak- 
ened, and he paused an instant to glance at his wife’s pretty 
face, so calmly peaceful, on which seemed to be flitting some- 
thing like the faint shadow of a smile. Then, knowing not 
what to do, he went downstairs again, came back, moved 
about from room to room, until it was nearly two in the morn- 
ing, wearying his ears with trying to decipher some meaning 
in the sounds that came to him from without. 

This condition of affairs could not last. Delaherche 
resolved to return once more to the Sous-Prefecture, feeling 
assured that all rest would be quite out of the question for him 
so long as his ignorance continued. A feeling of despair 
seized him, however, when he went downstairs and looked out 
upon the densely crowded street, where the confusion seemed 
to be worse than ever ; never would he have the strength to 


344 


THE DOWNFALL. 


fight his way to the Place Turenne and back again through 
obstacles the mere memory of which caused every bone in his 
body to ache again. And he was mentally discussing matters, 
when who should come up but Major BourOche, panting, 
perspiring, and swearing. 

'' Tonnerre de Dieii ! I wonder if my head’s on my shoul- 
ders or not!” 

He bad been obliged to visit the Hotel de Ville to see the 
mayor about his supply of chloroform, and urge him to issue a 
requisition for a quantity, for he had many operations to per- 
form, his stock of the drug was exhausted, and he was afraid, 
he said, that he should be compelled to carve up the poor 
devils without putting them to sleep. 

“Well?” inquired Delaherche. 

“Well, they can’t even tell whether the apothecaries have 
any or not!” 

But the manufacturer was thinking of other things than 
chloroform. “No, no,” he continued. “Have they brought 
matters to a conclusion yet? Have they signed the agreement 
with the Prussians?” 

The major made a gesture of impatience. ‘‘There is noth- 
ing concluded,” he cried. ‘‘It appears that those scoundrels 
are making demands out of all reason. Ah, well; let ’em 
commence afresh, then, and we’ll all leave our bones here. 
That will be best!” 

Delaherche’s face grew very pale as he listened. ‘‘But are 
you quite sure these things are so?” 

‘‘I was told them by those fellows of the municipal council, 
who are in permanent session at the city hall. An officer had 
been dispatched from the Sous-Prefecture to lay the whole 
affair before them.” 

And he went on to furnish additional details. The inter- 
view had taken place at the Chateau de Bellevue, near Don- 
chery, and the participants were General de Wimpffen, Gen- 
eral von Moltke, and Bismarck. A stern and inflexible man 
was that von Moltke, a terrible man to deal with! He began 
by demonstrating that he was perfectly acquainted with the 
hopeless situation of the French army; it was destitute of 
ammunition and subsistence, demoralization and disorder per- 
vaded its ranks, it was utterly powerless to break the iron 
circle by which it was girt about; while on the other hand the 
German armies occupied commanding positions from which 
they could lay the city in ashes in two hours. Coldly, unimpas- 


THE DOWNFALL. 


345 


sionedly, he stated his terms: the entire French army to sur- 
render arms and baggage and be treated as prisoners of war. 
Bismarck took no part in the discussion beyond giving the 
general his support, occasionally showing his teeth, like a big 
mastiff, inclined to be pacific on the whole, but quite ready to 
rend and tear should there be occasion for it. General de 
Wimpffen in reply protested with all the force he had at his 
command against these Conditions, the most severe that ever 
were imposed on a vanquished army. He spoke of his per- 
sonal grief and ill-fortune, the bravery of the troops, the dan- 
ger there was in driving a proud nation to extremity; for three 
hours he spoke with all the energy and eloquence of despair, 
alternately threatening and entreating, demanding that they 
should content themselves with interning their prisoners in 
France, or even in Algeria; and in the end the only concession 
granted, was that the officers might retain their swords, and 
those* among them who should enter into a solemn arrange- 
ment, attested by a written parole, to serve no more during the 
war, might return to their homes. Finally, the armistice to be 
prolonged until the next morning at ten o’clock ; if at that 
time the terms had not been accepted, the Prussian batteries 
would reopen fire and the city would be burned. 

“That’s stupid!’’ exclaimed Delaherche; “they have no 
right to burn a city that has done nothing to deserve it!’’ 

The major gave him still further food for anxiety by adding 
that some officers whom he had met at the Hotel de 1’ Europe 
w’ere talking of making a sortie en masse just before daylight. 
An extremely excited state of feeling had prevailed since the 
tenor of the German demands had become known, and meas- 
ures the most extravagant were proposed and discussed. No 
one seemed to be deterred by the consideration that it would 
be dishonorable to break the truce, taking advantage of the 
'darkness and giving the enemy no notification, and the wildest, 
most visionary schemes were offered; they would resume the 
march on Carignan, hewing their way through the Bavarians, 
which they could do in the black night; they would recapture 
the plateau of Illy by a surprise ; they would raise the blockade 
of the Mezieres road, or, by a determined, simultaneous rush, 
would force the German lines and throw themselves into Bel- 
gium. Others there were, indeed, who, feeling the hopeless- 
ness of their position, said nothing; they would have accepted 
any terms, signed any paper, with a glad cry of relief, simply 
tp have the aSair ended and done with. 


346 


THE DOWNFALL. 


“Good-night!” Bouroche said in conclusion. “I am 
going to try to sleep a couple of hours; I need it badly.” 

When left by himself Delaherche could hardly breathe. 
What, could it be true that they were going to fight again, were 
going to burn and raze Sedan! It was certainly to be, soon as 
the morrow’s sun should be high enough upon the hills to light 
the horror of the sacrifice. And once again he almost uncon- 
sciously climbed the steep ladder that led to the roofs and 
found himself standing among the chimneys, at the edge of the 
narrow terrace that overlooked the city; but at that hour of 
the night the darkness was intense and he could distinguish 
absolutely nothing amid the swirling waves of the Cimmerian 
sea that lay beneath him. Then the buildings of the factory 
below were the first objects which, one by one, disentangled 
themselves from the shadows and stood out before his vision 
in indistinct masses, which he had no difficulty in recognizing: 
the engine-house, the shops, the drying rooms, the storehouses, 
and when he reflected that within twenty-four hours there 
would remain of that imposing block of buildings, his fortune 
and his pride, naught save charred timbers and crumbling 
walls, he overflowed with pity for himself. He raised his 
glance thence once more to the horizon, and sent it traveling 
in a circuit around that profound, mysterious veil of blackness 
behind which lay slumbering the menace of the morrow. To 
the south, in the direction of Bazeilles, a few quivering little 
flames that rose fitfully on the air told where had been the 
site of the unhappy village, while toward the north the farm- 
house in the wood of la Garenne, that had been fired late in 
the afternoon, was burning still, and the trees about were dyed 
of a deep red with the ruddy blaze. Beyond the intermittent 
flashing of those two baleful fires no light to be seen; the 
brooding silence unbroken by any sound save those half-heard 
mutterings that pass through the air like harbingers of evil; 
about them, everywhere, the unfathomable abyss, dead and 
lifeless. Off there in the distance, very far away, perhaps, 
perhaps upon the ramparts, was a sound of someone weeping. 
It was all in vain that he strained his eyes to pierce the veil, 
to see something of Liry, la Marfee, the batteries of Frenois, 
and Wadelincourt, that encircling belt of bronze monsters of 
which he could instinctively feel the presence there, with their 
outstretched necks and yawning, ravenous muzzles. And as 
he recalled his glance and let it fall upon the city that lay 
around and beneath him, he heard its frightened breathing. 
It was not alone the unquiet slumbers of the soldiers who had 


THE DOWNFALL. 


347 


fallen in the streets, the blending of inarticulate sounds pro- 
duced by that gathering of guns, men, and horses; what he 
fancied he could distinguish was the insomnia, the alarmed 
watchfulness of his bourgeois neighbors,, who, no more than he, 
could sleep, quivering with feverish terrors, awaiting anxiously 
the coming of the day. They all must be aware that the 
capitulation had not been signed, and were all counting the 
hours, quaking at the thought that should it not be signed the 
sole resource left them would be to go down into their cellars 
and wait for their own walls to tumble in on them and crush 
the rife from their bodies. The voice of one in sore straits 
came up, it seemed to him, from the Rue des Voyards, shout- 
ing: “Help! murder!” amid the clash of arms. He bent 
over the terrace to look, then remained aloft there in the 
murky thickness of the night where there was not a star to 
cheer him, wrapped in such an ecstasy of terror that the hairs 
of his body stood erect. 

Below-stairs, at early daybreak, Maurice awoke upon his 
sofa. He was sore and stiff as if he had been racked; he did 
not stir, but lay looking listlessly at the windows, which grad- 
ually grew white under the light of a cloudy dawn. The hate- 
ful memories of the day before all came back to him with that 
distinctness that characterizes the impressions of our first wak- 
ing, how they had fought, fled, surrendered. It all rose before 
his vision, down to the very least detail, and he brooded with 
horrible anguish on the defeat, whose reproachful echoes 
seemed to penetrate to the inmost fibers of his being, as if he 
felt that all the responsibility of it was his. And he went on 
to reason on the cause of the evil, analyzing himself, reverting 
to his old habit of bitter and unavailing self-reproach. He 
would have felt so brave, so glorious had victory remained 
with them! And now, in defeat, weak and nervous as a 
woman, he once again gave way to one of those overwhelming 
fits of despair in which the entire world seemed to him to be 
foundering. Nothing was left them; the end of France was 
come. His frame was shaken by a storm of sobs, he wept hot 
tears, and joining his hands, the prayers of his childhood rose 
to his lips in stammering accents. 

“OGod! take me unto Thee ! O God! take unto Thyself 
all those who are weary and heavy-laden!” 

Jean, lying on the floor wrapped in his bed-quilt, began to 
show some signs of life. Finally, astonished at what he heard, 
he arose to a sitting posture. 

“What is the matter, youngster? Are you ill?” Then, 


THE DOWNFALL. 


348 

with a glimmering perception of how matters stood, he adopted 
a more paternal tone. “Come, tell me what the matter is. 
You must not let yourself be worried by such a little thing as 
this, you know.” 

“Ah!” exclaimed Maurice, “it is all up with us, va! yt, 
are Prussians now, and we may as well make up our mind 
to it.” 

As the peasant, with the hard-headedness of the uneduca- 
ted, expressed surprise to hear him talk thus, he endeavored to 
make it clear to him that, the race being degenerate and 
exhausted, it must disappear and make room for a newer and 
more vigorous strain. But the other, with an obstinate shake 
of the head, would not listen to the explanation. 

“What! would you try to make me believe that my bit of 
land is no longer mine? that I would permit the Prussians to 
take it from me while I am alive and my two arms are left to 
me? Come, come!” 

Then painfully, in such terms as he could command, he 
went on to tell how affairs looked to him. They had received 
an all-fired good basting, that was sure as sure could be! but 
they were not all dead yet, he didn’t believe; there were some 
left, and those would suffice to rebuild the house if they only 
behaved themselves, working hard and not drinking up what 
they earned. When a family has trouble, if its members work 
and put by a little something, they will pull through, in spite 
of all the bad luck in the world. And further, it is not such a 
bad thing to get a good cuffing once in a way; it sets one 
thinking. And, great heavens! if a man has something rotten 
about him, if he has gangrene in his arms or legs that is 
spreading all the time, isn’t it better to take a hatchet and lop 
them off rather than die as he would from cholera? 

“All up, all up! Ah, no, no! no, no!” he repeated several 
times. “It is not all up with me, I know very well it is not.” 

And notwithstanding his seedy condition and demoralized 
appearance, his hair all matted and pasted to his head by the 
blood that had flowed from his wound, he drew himself up 
defiantly, animated by a keen desire to live, to take up the 
tools of his trade or put his hand to the plow, in order, to use 
his own expression, to “rebuild the house.” He was of the 
old soil where reason and obstinacy grow side by side, of the 
land of toil and thrift. 

“All the same, though,” he continued, “I am sorry for the 
Emperor. Affairs seemed to be going on well; the farmers 


TUB DOWNFALL. 


349 


were getting a good price for their grain. But surely it was 
bad judgment on his part to allow himself to become involved 
in this business! ” 

Maurice, who was still in “the blues,” spoke regretfully: 
“Ah, the Emperor! I ahvays liked him in my heart, in spite 
of my republican ideas. Yes, 1 had it in the blood, on account 
of my grandfather, I suppose. And now that that limb is 
rotten and we shall have to lop it off, what is going to become 
of us?” 

His eyes began to wander, and his voice and manner evinced 
such distress that Jean became alarmed and was about to rise 
and go to him, when Henriette came into the room. She had 
just awakened on hearing the sound of voices in the room 
adjoining hers. The pale light of a cloudy morning now 
illuminated the apartment. 

“You come just in time to give him a scolding,” he said, 
with an affectation of liveliness. “He is not a good boy this 
morning. ” 

But the sight of his sister’s pale, sad face and the recollec- 
tion of her affliction had had a salutary effect on Maurice by 
determining a sudden crisis of tenderness. He opened his 
arms and took her to his bosom, and when she rested her head 
upon his shoulder, when he held her locked in a close embrace, 
a feeling of great gentleness pervaded him and they mingled 
their tears. 

“Ah, my poor, poor darling, why have I not more strength 
and courage to console you! for my sorrows are as nothing 
compared with yours. That good, faithful Weiss, the husband 
who loved you so fondly! What will become of you? You 
have always been the victim; always, and never a murmur 
from your lips. Think of the sorrow I have already caused 
you, and who can say that I shall not cause you still more in 
the future!” 

She was silencing him, placing her hand upon his mouth, 
when Delaherche came into the room, beside himself with 
indignation. While still on the terrace he had been seized by 
one of those uncontrollable nervous fits of hunger that are 
aggravated by fatigue, and had descended to the kitchen in 
quest of something warm to drink, where he had found, keep- 
ing company with his cook, a relative of hers, a carpenter of 
Bazeilles, whom she was in the act of treating to a bowl of hot 
wine. This person, who had been one of the last to leave the 
place while the conflagrations were at their height, had told 


35 <^ 


TPiE DOWNFALL, 


him that his dyehouse was utterly destroyed, nothing left of it 
but a heap of ruins. 

“The robbers, the thieves! Would you have believed it, 
1161112 “ he stammered, addressing Jean and Maurice. “There 
is no hope left; they mean to burn Sedan this morning as they 
burned Bazeilles yesterday. I’m ruined, I’m ruined!’’ The 
scar that Henriette bore on her forehead attracted his atten- 
tion, and he remembered that he had not spoken to her yet. 
“It is true, you went there, after all; you got that wound — 
Ah! poor Weiss! ’’ 

And seeing by the young woman’s tears that she was 
acquainted with her husband’s fate, he abruptly blurted out 
the horrible bit of news that the carpenter had communicated 
to him among the rest. 

“Poor Weiss! it seems they burned him. Yes, after shoot- 
ing all the civilians who were caught with arms in their hands, 
they threw their bodies into the flames of a burning house and 
poured petroleum over them,’’ 

• Henriette was horror-stricken as she listened. Her tears 
burst forth, her frame was shaken by her sobs. My God, my 
God, not even the poor comfort of going to claim her dear 
dead and give him decent sepulture; his ashes were to be scat- 
tered by the winds of heaven! Maurice had again clasped her 
in his arms and spoke to her endearingly, calling her his poor 
Cinderella, beseeching her not to take the matter so to heart, 
a brave woman as she was. 

After a time, during which no word was spoken, Delaherche, 
who had been standing at the window watching the growing 
day, suddenly turned and addressed the two soldiers: 

“By the way, I was near forgetting. What I came up here 
to tell you is this: down in the courtyard, in the shed where 
the treasure chests were deposited, there is an officer who is 
about to distribute the money among the men, so as to keep 
the Prussians from getting it. You had better go down, for a 
little money may be useful to you, that is, provided we are all 
alive a few hours hence.’’ 

The advice was good, and Maurice and Jean acted on it, 
having first prevailed on Henriette to take her brother’s place 
on the sofa. If she could not go to sleep again, she would at 
least be securing some repose. As for Delaherche, he passed 
through the adjoining chamber, where Gilberte with her tran- 
quil, pretty face was slumbering still as soundly as a child, 
neither the sound of conversation nor even Henriette’ s sobs 


THE DOWNFALL. 


351 


having availed to make her change her position. From 
there he went to the apartment where his mother was watching 
at Colonel de Vineuil’s bedside, and thrust his head through 
the door; the old lady was asleep in her fauteuil, while the 
colonel, his eyes closed, was like a corpse. He opened them 
to their full extent and asked: 

“Well, it’s all over, isn’t it?’’ 

Irritated by the question, which detained him at the very 
moment when he thought he should be able to slip away 
unobserved, Delaherche gave a wrathful look and murmured, 
sinking his voice: 

“Oh, yes, all over! until it begins again! There is nothing 
signed. ’’ 

The colonel went on in a voice scarcely higher than a- 
whisper; delirium was setting in. 

“Merciful God, let me die before the end! I do not hear 
the guns. Why have they ceased firing? Up there at Saint- 
Menges, at Fleigneux, we have command of all the roads; 
should the Prussians dare turn Sedan and attack us, we will 
drive them into the Meuse. The city is there, an insurmount- 
able obstacle between us and them; our positions, too, are the 
stronger. Forward! the 7th corps will lead, the 12th will 
protect the retreat ’’ 

And his fingers kept drumming on the counterpane with a 
measured movement, as if keeping time with the trot of the 
charger he was riding in his vision. Gradually the motion 
became slower and slower as his words became more indis- 
tinct and he sank off into slumber. It ceased, and he lay 
motionless and still, as if the breath had left his body. 

“Lie still and rest,’’ Delaherche whispered; “when I have 
news I will return.’’ 

Then, having first assured himself that he had not disturbed 
his mother’s slumber, he slipped away and disappeared. 

Jean and Maurice, on descending to the shed in the court- 
yard, had found there an officer of the pay department, seated 
on a common kitchen chair behind a little unpainted pine 
table, who, without pen, ink, or paper, without taking receipts 
or indulging in formalities of any kind, was dispensing for- 
tunes. He simply stuck his hand into the open mouth of the 
bags filled wdth bright gold pieces, and as the sergeants of the 
7th corps passed in line before him he filled their kepis never 
counting what he bestowed with such rapid liberality. The 
understanding was that the sergeants were subsequently to 


352 


THE DOWNFALL. 


divide what they received with the surviving men of their half- 
sections. Each of them received his portion awkwardly, as if 
it had been a ration of meat or coffee, then stalked off in an 
embarrassed, self-conscious sort of way, transferring the con- 
tents of the kipi to his trousers’ pockets so as not to display 
his wealth to the world at large. And not a word was spoken; 
there was not a sound to be heard but the crystalline chink 
and rattle of the coin as it was received by those poor devils, 
dumfounded to see the responsibility of such riches thrust on 
them when there was not a place in the city where they could 
purchase a loaf of bread or a quart of wine. 

When Jean and Maurice appeared before him the officer, 
who was holding outstretched his hand filled, as usual, with 
louis, drew it back. 

“Neither of you fellows is a sergeant. No one except 
sergeants is entitled to receive the money.” Then, in haste 
to be done with his task, he changed his mind: ‘‘Never mind, 
though; here, you corporal, take this. Step lively, now. 

• Next man!” 

And he dropped the gold coins into the kepi that Jean held 
out to him. The latter, oppressed by the magnitude of the 
amount, nearly six hundred francs, insisted that Maurice 
should take one-half. No one could say what might happen; 
they might be parted from each other. 

They made the division- in the garden, before the ambu- 
lance, and when they had concluded their financial business 
they entered, having recognized on the straw near the entrance 
the drummer-boy of their company, Bastian, a fat, good- 
natured little fellow, who had had the ill-luck to receive a 
spent ball in the groin about five o’clock the day before, when 
the battle was ended. He had been dying by inches for the 
last twelve hours. 

In the dim, white light of morning, at that hour of awaken- 
ing, the sight of the ambulance sent a chill of horror through 
them. Three more patients had died during the night, with- 
out anyone being aware of it, and the attendants were hur- 
riedly bearing away the corpses in order to make room for 
others. Those who had been operated on the day before 
opened wide their eyes in their somnolent, semi-conscious 
state, and looked with dazed astonishment on that vast dormi- 
tory of suffering, where the victims of the knife, only half- 
slaughtered, rested on their straw. It was in vain that some 
- attempts had been made the night before to clean up the room 


THE DOWNFALL. 


353 


after the bloody work of the operations ; there were great 
splotches of blood on the ill-swept floor; in a bucket of water 
a great sponge was floating, stained with red, for all the world 
like a human brain ; a hand, its fingers crushed and broken, 
had been overlooked and lay on the floor of the shed. It was 
the parings and trimmings of the human butcher shop, the 
horrible waste and refuse that ensues upon a day of slaughter, 
viewed in the cold, raw light of dawn. 

Bouroche, who, after a few hours of repose, had already 
resumed his duties, stopped in front of the wounded drummer- 
boy, Bastian, then passed on with an imperceptible shrug of 
his .shoulders. A hopeless case; nothing to be done. The 
lad had opened his eyes, however, and emerging from the 
comatose state in which he had been lying, was eagerly watch- 
ing a sergeant who, his kepi filled with gold in his hand, had 
come into the room to see if there were any of his men among 
those poor wretches. He found two, and to each of them 
gave twenty francs. Other sergeants came in, and the gold 
began to fall in showers upon the straw, among the dying men. 
Bastian, who had managed to raise himself, stretched out his 
two hands, even then shaking in the final agony. 

“Don’t forget me! don’t forget me!’’ 

The sergeant would have passed on and gone his way, as 
Bouroche had done. What good could money do there? 
Then yielding to a kindly impulse, he threw some coins, never 
stopping to count them, into the poor hands that were already 
cold. 

“Don’t forget me! don’t forget me!’’ 

Bastian fell backward on his straw. For a long time he 
groped with stiffening fingers for the elusive gold, which 
seemed to avoid him. And thus he died. 

“The gentleman has blown his candle out; good-night!’’ 
said a little, black, wizened zouave, who occupied the next 
bed. “It’s vexatious, when one has the wherewithal to pay 
for wetting his whistle!’’ 

He had his left foot done up in splints. Nevertheless he 
managed to raise himself on his knees and elbows and in this 
posture crawl over to the dead man, whom he relieved of all 
his money, forcing open his hands, rummaging among his 
clothing and the folds of his capote. When he got back to 
his place, noticing that he was observed, he simply said: 

“There’s no use letting the stuff be wasted, is there?’’ 

Maurice, sick at heart in that atmosphere of human distress 


354 


THE DOWNFALL, 


and suffering, had long since dragged Jean away. As they 
passed out through the shed where the operations were per- 
formed they saw Bouroche preparing to amputate the leg of 
a poor little man of twenty, without chloroform, he having 
been unable to obtain a further supply of the anaesthetic. And 
they fled, running, so as not to hear the poor boy’s shrieks. 

Delaherche, who came in from the street just then, beck- 
oned to them and shouted : 

“Come upstairs, come, quick! we are going to have break- 
fast. The cook has succeeded in procuring some milk, and it 
is well she did, for we are all in great need of something to 
warm our stomachs.” And notwithstanding his efforts to do 
so, he could not entirely repress his delight and exultation. 
With a radiant countenance he added, lowering his voice: “It 
is all right this time. General de Wimpffen has set out again 
for the German headquarters to sign the capitulation.” 

Ah, how much those words meant to him, what comfort 
there was in them, what relief! his horrid nightmare dispelled, 
his property saved from destruction, his daily life to be 
resumed, under changed conditions, it is true, but still it was 
to go on, it was not to cease ! It was little Rose who had told 
him of the occurrences of the morning at the Sous-Prefecture; 
the girl had come hastening through the streets, now some- 
what less choked than they had been, to obtain a supply of 
bread from an aunt of hers who kept a baker’s shop in the 
quarter; it was striking nine o'clock. As early as eight Gen- 
eral de Wimpffen had convened another council of war, con- 
sisting of more than thirty generals, to whom he related the 
results that had been reached so far, the hard conditions 
imposed by the victorious foe, and his own fruitless efforts to 
secure a mitigation of them. His emotion was such that his 
hands shook like a leaf, his eyes were suffused with tears. He 
was still addressing the assemblage when a colonel of the Ger- 
man staff presented himself, on behalf of General von Moltke, 
to remind them that, unless a decision were arrived at by ten 
o’clock, their guns would open fire on the city of Sedan. 
With this horrible alternative before them the council could do 
nothing save authorize the general to proceed once more to 
the Chateau of Bellevue and accept the terms of the victors. 
He must have accomplished his mission by that time, and the 
entire French army were prisoners of war. 

When she had concluded her narrative Rose launched out 
into a detailed account of the tremendous excitement the tidings 


THE DOWNFALL, 


355 

had produced in the city. At the Sous-Pr4fecture she had 
seen officers tear the epaulettes from their shoulders, weeping 
meanwhile like children. Cavalrymen had thrown their sabers 
from the Pont de Meuse into the river; an entire regiment of 
cuirassiers had passed, each man tossing his blade over the 
parapet and sorrowfully watching the water close over it. In 
the streets many soldiers grasped their muskets by the barrel 
and smashed them against a wall, while there were artillerymen 
who removed the mechanism from the mitrailleuses and flung 
it into the sewer. Some there were who buried or burned the 
regimental standards. In the Place Turenne an old sergeant 
climbed upon a gate-post and harangued the throng as if he 
had suddenly taken leave of his senses, reviling the leaders, 
stigmatizing them as poltroons and cowards. Others seemed 
as if dazed, shedding big tears in silence, and others also, it 
must be confessed (and it is probable that they were in the 
majority), betrayed by their laughing eyes and pleased expres- 
sion the satisfaction they felt at the change in affairs. There 
was an end to their suffering at last; they were prisoners of 
war, they could not be obliged to fight any more! For so 
many days they had been distressed by those long, weary 
marches, with never food enough to satisfy their appetite! 
And then, too, they were the weaker; what use was therein 
fighting? If their chiefs had betrayed them, had sold them to 
the enemy, so much the better; it would be the sooner ended! 
It was such a delicious thing to think of, that they were to 
have white bread to eat, were to sleep between sheets! 

As Delaherche was about to enter the dining room in com- 
pany with Maurice and Jean, his mother called to him from 
above. 

“Come up here, please; I am anxious about the colonel.” 

M. de Vinenil, with wide-open eyes, was talking rapidly 
and excitedly of the subject that filled his bewildered brain. 

“The Prussians have cut us off from Mezieres, but what mat- 
ters it! See, they have outmarched us and got possession of 
the plain of Donchery; soon they will be up with the wood of 
la Falizette and flank us there, while more of them are coming 
up along the valley of the Givonne. The frontier is behind 
us; let us kill as many of them as we can and cross it at a 
bound. Yesterday, yes, that is what I would have ad- 
vised ” 

At that moment his burning eyes lighted on Delaherche. 
He recognized him ; the sight seemed to sober him and dispel 


356 


7' HE DOWNFALL. 


the hallucination under which he was laboring, and coming 
back to the terrible reality, he asked for the third time: 

“It is all over, is it not?” 

The manufacturer explosively blunted out the expression of 
his satisfaction ; he could not restrain it. 

“Ah, yes, God be praised! it is all over, completely over. 
The capitulation must be signed by this time.” 

The colonel raised himself at a bound to a sitting posture, 
notwithstanding his bandaged foot; he took his sword from 
the chair by the bedside where it lay and made an attempt to 
break it, but his hands trembled too violently, and the blade 
slipped from his fingers. 

“Look out! he will cut himself!” Delaherche cried in 
alarm. “Take that thing away from him; it is dangerous!” 

Mme. Delaherche took possession of the sword. With a 
feeling of compassionate respect for the poor colonel’s grief 
and despair she did not conceal it, as her son bade her do, but 
with a single vigorous effort snapped it across her knee, with a 
strength of which she herself would never have supposed her 
poor old hands capable. The colonel laid himself down 
again, casting a look of extreme gentleness upon his old 
friend, who went back to her chair and seated herself in her 
usual rigid attitude. 

In the dining room the cook had meantime served bowls of 
hot coffee and milk for the entire party. Henriette and Gil- 
berte had awakened, the latter, completely restored by her long 
and refreshing slumber, with bright eyes and smiling face; she 
embraced most tenderly her friend, whom she pitied, she said, 
from the bottom of her heart. Maurice seated himself beside 
his sister, while Jean, who was unused to polite society, but 
could not decline the invitation that was extended to him, was 
Delaherche’s right-hand neighbor. It w^as Mme. Delaherche’s 
custom not to come to the table with the family; a servant 
carried her a bowl’, which she drank while sitting by the colo- 
nel. The party of five, however, who sat down together, 
although they commenced their meal in silence, soon became 
cheerful and Talkative. Why should they not rejoice and be 
glad to find themselves there, safe and sound, with food before 
them to satisfy their hunger, when the country round about 
was covered with thousands upon fhousands of poor starving 
wretches? In the cool, spacious dining room the snow-white 
tablecloth was a delight to the eye and the steaming caf^ au lait 
seemed delicious. 

They conversed. Delaherche, who had recovered his assur- 


THE DOWNFALL. 


357 


ance and was again the wealthy manufacturer, the conde- 
scending patron courting popularity, severe only toward those 
who failed to succeed, spoke of Napoleon III., whose face as 
he saw it last continued to haunt his memory. He addressed 
himself to Jean, having that simple-minded young man as his 
neighbor. “Ves, sir, the Emperor has deceived me, and I 
don’t hesitate to say so. His henchmen may put in the plea 
of mitigating circumstances, but it won’t go down, sir; he is 
evidently the first, the only cause of our misfortunes.” 

-He had quite forgotten that only a few months before he 
had been an ardent Bonapartist and had labored to ensure the 
success of the plebiscite, and now he who was henceforth to 
be known as the Man of Sedan was not even worthy to be 
pitied ; he ascribed to him every known iniquity. 

“A man of no capacity, as everyone is now compelled to 
admit; but let that pass, I say nothing of that. A visionary, 
a theorist, an unbalanced mind, with whom affairs seemed to 
succeed as long as he had luck on his side. And there’s no 
use, don’t you see, sir, in attempting to work on our sympa- 
thies and excite our commiseration by telling us that he was 
deceived, that the opposition refused him the necessary grants 
of men and money. It is he who has deceived us, he whose 
crimes and blunders have landed us in the horrible muddle 
where we are.” 

Maurice, who preferred to say nothing on the subject, could 
not help smiling, while Jean, embarrassed by the political turn 
the conversation had taken and fearful lest he might make 
some ill-timed remark, simply replied: 

“They say he is a brave man, though.” 

But those few words, modestly expressed, fairly made Dela- 
herche jump. All his past fear and alarm, all the mental 
anguish he had suffered, burst from his lips in a cry of con- 
centrated passion, closely allied to hatred. 

‘‘A brave man, forsooth; and what does that amount to! 
Are you aware, sir, that my factory was struck three times by 
Prussian shells, and that it is no fault of the Emperor’s that it 
was not burned! Are you aware that I, I shall lose a hundred 
thousand francs by this idiotic business! No, no; France 
invaded, pillaged, and laid waste, our industries compelled to 
shut down, our commerce ruined; it is a little too much, I tell 
you! One brave man like that is quite sufficient; may the 
Lord preserve us from any more of them! He is down in the 
blood and mire, and there let him remain!” 

And he made a forcible gesture with his closed fist as if 


THE DOWNFALL 


5S« 

thrusting down and holding under the water some poor wretch 
who was struggling to save himself, then finished his coffee, 
smacking his lips like a true gourmand. Gilberte waited on 
Henriette as if she had been a child, laughing a little involun- 
tary laugh when the latter made some exhibition of absent- 
mindedness. And when at last the coffee had all been drunk 
they still lingered on in the peaceful quiet of the great cool 
dining room. 

And at that same hour Napoleon III. was in the weaver’s 
lowly cottage on the Donchery road. As early as five o’clock 
in the morning he had insisted on leaving the Sous-Prefecture ; 
he felt ill at ease in Sedan, which was at once a menace and a 
reproach to him, and moreover he thought he might, in some 
measure, alleviate the sufferings of his tender heart by obtain- 
ing more favorable terms for his unfortunate army. His 
object was to have a personal interview with the King of Prus- 
sia. He had taken his place in a hired caleche and been 
driven along the broad highway, with its row of lofty poplars 
on either side, and this first stage of his journey into exile, 
accomplished in the chill air of early dawn, must have reminded 
him forcibly of the grandeur that had been his and that he was 
putting behind him forever. It was on this road that he had 
his -encounter with Bismarck, who came hurrying to meet him 
in an old cap and coarse, greased boots, with the sole object 
of keeping him occupied and preventing him from seeing the 
King until the capitulation should have been signed. The 
King was still at Vendresse, some nine miles away. Where 
was he to go? What roof would afford him shelter while he 
waited? In his own country, so far away, the Palace of the 
Tuileries had disappeared from his sight, swallowed up in the 
bosom of a storm-cloud, and he was never to see it more. 
Sedan seemed already to have receded into the distance, leagues 
and leagues, and to be parted from him by a river of blood. In 
France there were no longer imperial chateaus, nor official resi- 
dences, nor even a chimney-nook in the house of the humblest 
functionary, where he would have dared to enter and claim hos- 
pitality. And it was in the house of the weaver that he deter- 
mined to seek shelter, the squalid cottage that stood close to 
the roadside, with its scanty kitchen-garden inclosed by a hedge 
and its front of a single story with little forbidding windows. 
The room above-stairs was simply whitewashed and had a tiled 
floor; the only furniture was a common pine table and two 
straw-bottomed chairs. He spent two hours there, at first 


THE DOWNFALL. 


359 


in company with Bismarck, who smiled to hear him speak of 
generosity, after that alone in silent misery, flattening his ashy 
face against the panes, taking his last look at French soil and 
at the Meuse, winding in and out, so beautiful, among the 
broad fertile fields. 

Then the next day and the days that came after were other 
wretched stages of that journey; the Chateau of Bellevue, a 
pretty bourgeois retreat overlooking the river, where he rested 
that night, where he shed tears after his interview with King 
William ; the sorrowful departure, that most miserable flight 
in a hired caleche over remote roads to the north of the city, 
which he avoided, not caring to face the wrath of the van- 
quished troops and the starving citizens, making a wide circuit 
over cross-roads by Floing, Fleigneux, and Illy and crossing 
the stream on a bridge of boats, laid down by the Prussians at 
Iges; the tragic encounter, the story of which has been so 
often told, that occurred on the corpse-cumbered plateau of 
Illy : the miserable Emperor, whose state was such that his 
horse could not be allowed to trot, had sunk under some more 
than usually violent attack of his complaint, mechanically 
smoking, perhaps, his everlasting cigarette, when a band of 
haggard, dusty, blood-stained prisoners, who were being con- 
ducted from Fleigneux to Sedan, were forced to leave the road 
to let the carriage pass and stood watching it from the ditch; 
those who were at the head of the line merely eyed him in 
silence ; presently a hoarse, sullen murmur began to make itself 
heard, and finally, as the caleche proceeded down the line, the 
men burst out with a storm of yells and cat-calls, shaking their 
fists and calling down maledictions on the head of him who 
had been their ruler. After that came the interminable jour- 
ney across the battlefield, as far as Givonne, amid scenes of 
havoc and devastation, amid the dead, who lay with staring 
eyes upturned that seemed to be full of menace; came, too, 
the bare, dreary fields, the great silent forest, then the fron- 
tier, running along the summit of a ridge, marked only by a 
stone, facing a wooden post that seemed ready to fall, and 
beyond the soil of Belgium, the end of all, with its road bor- 
dered with gloomy hemlocks descending sharply into the nar- 
row valley. 

And that first night of exile, that he spent at a common inn, 
the Hotel de la Poste at Bouillon, what a night it was! When 
the Emperor showed himself at his window in deference to the 
throng of French refugees and sight-seers that filled the place, 


360 


THE DOWNFALL. 


he was greeted with a storm of hisses and hostile murmurs. 
The apartment assigned him, the three windows of which 
opened on the public square and on the Semoy, was the typi- 
cal tawdry bedroom of the provincial inn with its conventional 
furnishings: the chairs covered with crimson damask, the 
mahogany and on the mantel the imitation bronze 

clock, flanked by a pair of conch shells and vases of artificial 
flowers under glass covers. On either side of the door was a 
little single bed, to one of which the wearied aide-de-camp be- 
took himself at nine o’clock and was immediately wrapped in 
soundest slumber. On the other the Emperor, to whom the 
god of sleep was less benignant, tossed almost the whole 
night through, and if he arose to try to quiet his excited nerves 
by walking, the sole distraction that his eyes encountered was 
a pair of engravings that were hung to right and left of the 
chimney, one depicting Rouget de Lisle singing the Marseil- 
laise, the other a crude representation of the Last Judgment, 
the dead rising from their graves at the sound of the Arch- 
angel’s trump, the resurrection of the victims of the battlefield, 
'about to appear before their God to bear witness against their 
rulers. 

The imperial baggage train, cause in its day of so much 
scandal, had been left behind at Sedan, where it rested in 
ignominious hiding behind the Sous-Prefet’s lilac bushes. It 
puzzled the authorities somewhat to devise means for ridding 
themselves of what was to them a bete noire., for getting it away 
from the city unseen by the famishing multitude, upon whom 
the sight of its flaunting splendor would have produced much 
the same effect that a red rag does on a maddened bull. They 
waited until there came an unusually dark night, when horses, 
carriages, and baggage-wagons, with their silver stew-pans, 
plate, linen, and baskets of fine wines, all trooped out of Sedan 
in deepest mystery and shaped their course for Belgium, noise- 
lessly, without beat of drum, over the least frequented roads, 
like a thief stealing away in the night. 


PART THIRD. 


I. 

A ll the long, long day of the battle Silvine, up on Remilly 
hill, where Father Fouchard’s little farm was situated, but 
her heart and soul absent with Honore amid the dangers of 
the conflict, never once took her eyes from off Sedan, where 
‘the guns were roaring. The following day, moreover, her 
anxiety was even greater still, being increased by her inability 
to obtain any definite tidings, for the Prussians who were 
guarding the roads in the vicinity refused to answer questions, 
as much from reasons of policy as because they knew but very 
little themselves. The bright sun of the day before was no 
longer visible, and showers had fallen, making the valley look 
less cheerful than usual in the wan light. 

Toward evening Father Fouchard, who was also haunted by 
a sensation of uneasiness in the midst of his studied taciturn- 
ity, was standing on his doorstep reflecting on the probable 
outcome of events. His son had no place in his thoughts, but 
he was speculating how he best might convert the misfortunes 
of others into fortune for himself, and as he revolved these 
considerations in his mind he noticed a tall, strapping young 
fellow, dressed in the peasant’s blouse, who had been strolling 
up and down the road for the last minute or so, looking as if 
he did not know what to do with himself. His astonishment 
on recognizing him was so great that he called him aloud by 
name, notwithstanding that three Prussians happened to be 
passing at the time. 

“Why, Prosper! Is that you?’’ 

The chasseur d’Afrique imposed silence on him with an 
emphatic gesture; then, coming closer, he said in an under- 
tone: 

“Yes, it is I. I have had enough of fighting for nothing, 
and I cut my lucky. Say, Father Fouchard, you don’t hap- 
pen to be in need of a laborer on your farm, do you?’’ 

All the old man’s prudence came hack to him in a twihk- 

361 


362 


THE DOWNFALL. 


ling. He was looking for someone to help him, but it would 
be better not to say so at once. 

“A lad on the farm? faith, no — not just now. Come in, 
though, all the same, and have a glass. I shan’t leave you 
out on the road when you’re in trouble, that’s sure.” 

Silvine, in the kitchen, was setting the pot of soup on the 
fire, while little Chariot was hanging by her skirts, frolicking 
and laughing. She did not recognize Prosper at first, although 
they had formerly served together in the same household, and 
it was not until she came in, bringing a bottle of wine and two 
glasses, that she looked him squarely in the face. She uttered 
a cry of joy and surprise ; her sole thought was of Plonore. 

“Ah, you were there, weren’t you? Is Honore all right?” 

Prosper’s answer was ready to slip from his tongue; he hesi- 
tated. For the last two days he had been living in a dream, 
among a rapid succession of strange, ill-defined events which 
left behind them no precise memory, as a man starts, half- 
awakened, from a slumber peopled with fantastic visions. It 
was true, doubtless, he believed he had seen Honore lying 
upon a cannon, dead, but he would not have cared to swear to 
it; what use is there in afflicting people when one is not 
certain? 

“Honore,” he murmured, “I don’t know, I couldn’t say.” 

She continued to press him with her questions, looking at 
him steadily. 

“You did not see him, then?” 

He waved his hands before him with a slow, uncertain 
motion and an expressive shake of the head. 

“How can you expect one to remember! There were such 
lots of things, such lots of things. Look you, of all that 

d d battle, if I was to die for it this minute, I could not 

tell you that much — no, not even the place where I was. I 
believe men .get to be no better than idiots, ’pon my word I 
do!” And tossing off a glass of wine, he sat gloomily silent, 
his vacant eyes turned inward on the dark recesses of his mem- 
ory. “All that I remember is that it was beginning to be dark 
when I recovered consciousness. I went down while we were 
charging, and then the sun was very high. I must have been 
lying there for hours, my right leg caught under poor old 
Zephyr, who had received a piece of shell in the middle of his 
chest. There was nothing to laugh at in my position, I can 
tell you; the dead comrades lying around me in piles, not a 
living soul in sight, and the certainty that I should have to 


THE DOWNFALL. 


363 


kick the bucket too unless someone came to put me on my 
legs again. Gently, gently, I tried to free my leg, but it was 
no use; Zephyr’s weight must have been fully up to that of 
the five hundred thousand devils. He was warm still. I 
patted him, I spoke to him, saying all the pretty things I could 
think of, and here’s a thing, do you see, that I shall never 
forget as long as I live: he opened his eyes and made an effort 
to raise his poor old head, which was resting on the ground 
beside my own. Then we had a talk together: ‘Poor old 
fellow,’ says I, ‘I don’t want to say a word to hurt your feel- 
ings, but you must want to see me croak with you, you 
hold me down so hard.’ Of course he didn’t say he did; 
he couldn’t, but for all that I could read in his great sorrow- 
ful eyes how bad he felt to have to part with me. And 1 can’t 
say how the thing happened, whether he intended it or whether 
it was part of the death struggle, but all at once he gave him- 
self a great shake that sent him rolling away to one side. I 
was enabled to get on my feet once more, but ah! in what a 
pickle; my leg was swollen and heavy as a leg of lead. Never 
mind, I took Zephyr’s head in my arms and kept on talking to 
him, telling him all the kind thoughts I had in my heart, 
that he was a good horse, that I loved him dearly, that I 
should never forget him. He listened to me, he seemed to be 
so pleased! Then he had another long convulsion, and so he 
died, with his big vacant eyes fixed on me till the last. It is 
very strange, though, and I don’t suppose anyone will believe 
me; still, it is the simple truth that great, big tears were stand- 
ing in his eyes. Poor old Zephyr, he cried just like a 
man ” 

At this point Prosper’s emotion got the better of him; tears 
choked his utterance and he was obliged to break off. He 
gulped down another glass of wine and went on with his nar- 
rative in disjointed, incomplete sentences. It kept growing 
darker and darker, until there was only a narrow streak of red 
light on the horizon at the verge of the battlefield ; the shad- 
ows of the dead horses seemed to be projected across the plain 
to an infinite distance. The pain and stiffness in his leg kept 
him from moving; he must have remained for a long time 
beside Zephyr. Then, with his fears as an incentive, he had 
managed to get on his feet and hobble away; it was an imper- 
ative necessity to him not to be alone, to find comrades who 
would share his fears with him and make them less. Thus 
from every nook and corner of the battlefield, from hedges 


364 


THE DOWNFALL. 


and ditches and clumps of bushes, the wounded who had been 
left behind dragged themselves painfully in search of compan- 
ionship, forming when possible little bands of four or five, 
finding it less hard to agonize and die in the company of their 
fellow-beings. In the wood of la Garenne Prosper fell in with 
two men of the 43d regiment; they were not wounded, but 
had burrowed in the underbrush like rabbits, waiting for the 
coming of the night. When they learned that he was familiar 
with the roads they communicated to him their plan, which 
was to traverse the woods under cover of the darkness and 
make their escape into Belgium. At first he declined to share 
their undertaking, for he would have preferred to proceed 
direct to Remilly, where he was certain to find a refuge, but 
where was he to obtain the blouse and trousers that he 
required as a disguise? to say nothing of the impracticability 
of getting past the numerous Prussian pickets and outposts 
that filled the valley all the way from la Garenne to Remilly. 
He therefore ended by consenting to act as guide to the two 
comrades. His Jeg was less stiff than it had been, and they 
were so fortunate as to secure a loaf of bread at a farmhouse. 
Nine o’clock was striking from the church of a village in the 
distance as they resumed their way. The only point where 
they encountered any danger worth mentioning was at la 
Chapelle, where they fell directly into the midst of a Prussian 
advanced post before they were aware of it ; the enemy flew to 
arms and blazed away into the darkness, while they, throwing 
themselves on the ground and alternately crawling and running 
until the fire slackened, ultimately regained the shelter of the 
trees. After that they kept to the woods, observing the 
utmost vigilance. At a bend in the road they crept up behind 
an out-lying picket and, leaping on his back, buried a knife in 
his throat. Then the road was free before them and they no 
longer had to observe precaution ; they went ahead, laughing 
and whistling. It was about three in the morning when they 
reached a little Belgian village, where they knocked up a 
worthy farmer, who at once opened his barn to them ; they 
snuggled among the hay and slept soundly until morning. 

The sun was high in the heavens when Prosper awoke. As 
he opened his eyes and looked about him, while the two com- 
rades were still snoring, he beheld their entertainer engaged in 
hitching a horse to a great carriole loaded with bread, rice, 
coffee, sugar, and all sorts of eatables, the whole concealed 
under sacks of charcoal, and a little questioning elicited from 


THE DOWNFALL. 


365 


the good man the fact that he had two married daughters liv- 
ing at Raucourt, in France, whom the passage of the Bavarian 
troops had left entirely destitute, and that the provisions in 
the carriole were intended for them. He had procured that 
very morning the safe-conduct that was required for the jour- 
ney. Prosper was immediately seized by an uncontrollable 
desire to take a seat in that carriole and return to the country 
that he loved so and for which his heart was yearning with 
such a violent nostalgia. It was perfectly simple; the farmer 
would have to pass through Remilly to reach Raucourt; he 
would alight there. The matter was arranged in three min- 
utes; he obtained a loan of the longed-for blouse and trousers, 
and the farmer gave out, wherever they stopped, that he was 
his servant; so that about six o’clock he got down in front of 
the church, not having been stopped more than two or three 
times by the German outposts. 

They were all silent for a while, then: “No, I had enough 
of it!” said Prosper. “If they had but set us at work that 
amounted to something, as out there in Africa! but this going 
up the hill only to come down again, the feeling that one is of 
no earthly use to anyone, that is no kind of a life at all. And 
then I should be lonely, now that poor Zephyr is dead; all 
that is left me to do is to go to work on a farm. That will be 
better than living among the Prussians as a prisoner, don’t you 
think so? You have horses. Father Fouchard; try me, and 
see whether or not I will love them and take good care of them.’’ 

The old fellow’s eyes gleamed, but he touched glasses once 
more with the other and concluded the arrangement without 
any evidence of eagerness/ 

“Very well; I wish to be of service to you as far as lies in 
my power; I will take you. As regards the question of wages, 
though, you must not speak of it until the war is over, for 
really I am not in need of anyone and the times are too hard.’’ 

Silvine, who had remained seated with Chariot on her lap, 
had never once taken her eyes from Prosper’s face. When 
she saw him rise with the intention of going to the stable and 
making immediate acquaintance with its four-footed inhabi- 
tants, she again asked: 

“Then you say you did not see Honore?’’ 

The question repeated thus abruptly made him start, as if it 
had suddenly cast a flood of light in upon an obscure corner 
of his memory. He hesitated for a little, but finally came to 
a decision and spoke. 


366 


THE DOWNFALL, 


“See here, I did not wish to grieve you just now, but I 
don’t believe Honore will ever come back.” 

“Never come back — what do you mean?” 

“Yes, I believe that the Prussians did his business for him. 
I saw him lying across his gun, his head erect, with a great 
wound just beneath the heart.” 

There was silence in the room. Silvine’s pallor was frightful 
to behold, while Father Fouchard displayed his interest in the 
narrative by replacing upon the table his glass, into which he 
had just poured what wine remained in the bottle. 

“Are you quite certain?” she asked in a choking voice. 

'"Dame! as certain as one can be of a thing he has seen 
with his own two eyes. It was on a little hillock, with three 
trees in a group right beside it; it seems to me I could go to 
the spot blindfolded.” 

If it was true she had nothing left to live for. That lad 
who had been so good to her, who had forgiven her her fault, 
had plighted his troth and was to marry her when he came 
home at the end of the campaign! and they had robbed her of 
him, they had murdered him, and he was lying out there on 
the battlefield with a wound under the heart! She had never 
known how strong her love for him had been, and now the 
thought that she was to see him no more, that he who was hers 
was hers no longer, aroused her almost to a pitch of madness 
and made her forget her usual tranquil resignation. She set 
Chariot roughly down upon the floor, exclaiming: 

“Good! I shall not believe that story until I see the evi- 
dence of it, until I see it with my own eyes. Since you know 
the spot you shall conduct me to it. And if it is true, if we 
find him, we will bring him home with us.” 

Her tears allowed her to say no more; she bowed her head 
upon the table, her frame convulsed by long-drawn, tumultu- 
ous sobs that shook her from head to foot, while the child, not 
knowing what to make of such unusual treatment at his moth- 
er’s hands, also commenced to weep violently. She caught 
him up and pressed him to her heart, with distracted, stam- 
mering words: 

“My poor child! my poor child!” 

Consternation was depicted on old Fouchard’s face. 
Appearances notwithstanding, he did love his son, after a 
fashion of his own. Memories of the past came back to him, 
of days long vanished, when his wife was still living and 
Honor6 was a boy at school, and two big tears appeared in his 


TiTE DOiVNEALL. 


367 

smaii red eyes and trickled down his old leathery cheeks. He 
had not wept before in more than ten years. In the end he 
grew angry at the thought of that son who was his and upon 
whom he was never to set eyes again ; he rapped out an oath 
or two. 

"'Nom de Dieu ! it is provoking all the same, to have only 
one boy, and that he should be taken from you!” 

When their agitation had in a measure subsided, however, 
Fouchard was annoyed that Silvine still continued to talk of 
going to search for Honore’s body out there on the battlefield. 
She made no further noisy demonstration, but harbored her 
purpose with the dogged silence of despair, and he failed to 
recognize in her the docile, obedient servant who was wont to 
perform her daily tasks without a murmur; her great, submis- 
sive eyes, in which lay the chief beauty of her face, had 
assumed an expression of stern determination, while beneath 
her thick brown hair her cheeks and brow wore a pallor that 
was like death. She had torn off the red kerchief that was 
knotted about her neck, and was entirely in black, like a 
widow in her weeds. It was all in vain that he tried to 
impress on her the difficulties of the undertaking, the dangers 
she would be subjected to, the little hope there was of recov- 
ering the corpse; she did not even take the trouble to answer 
him, and he saw clearly that unless he seconded her in her 
plan she would start out alone and do some unwise thing, and 
this aspect of the case worried him on account of the compli- 
cations that might arise between him and the Prussian author- 
ities. He therefore finally decided to go and lay the matter 
before the mayor of Remilly, who was a kind of distant cousin 
of his, and they two between them concocted a story: Silvine 
was to pass as the actual widow of Honore, Prosper became 
her brother, so that the Bavarian colonel, who had his quarters 
in the Hotel of the Maltese Cross down in the lower part of 
the village, made no difficulty about granting a pass which 
authorized the brother and sister to bring home the body of 
the husband, provided they could find it. By this time it was 
night; the only concession that could be obtained from the 
young woman was that she would delay starting on her expe- 
dition until morning. 

When morning came old Fouchard could not be prevailed 
on to allow one of his horses to be taken, fearing he might 
never set eyes on it again. What assurance had he that the 
Prussians would not confiscate the entire equipage? At last 


368 


THE DOWNFALL. 


he consented, though with very bad grace, to loan her the 
donkey, a little gray animal, and his cart, which, though small, 
would be large enough to hold a dead man. He gave minute 
instructions to Prosper, who had had a good night’s sleep, but 
was anxious and thoughtful at the prospect of the expedition 
now that, being rested and refreshed, he attempted to remem- 
ber something of the battle. At the last moment Silvine went 
and took the counterpane from her own bed, folding and 
spreading it on the floor of the cart. Just as she was about to 
start she came running back to embrace Chariot. 

“I entrust him to your care. Father Fouchard; keep an eye 
on him and see that he doesn’t get hold of the matches.” 

“Yes, yes; never fear ! ” 

They were late in getting off; it was near seven o’clock 
when the little procession, the donkey, hanging his head and 
drawing the narrow cart, leading, descended the steep hill of 
Remilly. It had rained heavily during the night, and the 
roads were become rivers of mud; great lowering clouds hung 
in the heavens, imparting an air of cheerless desolation to the 
scene. 

Prosper, wishing to save all the distance he could, had 
determined on taking the route that lay through the city of 
Sedan, but before they reached Pont-Maugis a Prussian out- 
post halted the cart and held it for over an hour, and finally, 
after their pass had been referred, one after another, to four 
or five officials, they were \old they, might resume their jour- 
ney, but only on condition of taking the longer, roundabout 
route by way of Bazeilles, to do which they would have to turn 
into a cross-road on their left. No reason was assigned; their 
object was probably to avoid adding to the crowd that encum- 
bered the streets of the city. When Silvine crossed the Meuse 
by the railroad bridge, that ill-starred bridge that the French 
had failed to destroy and which, moreover, had been the cause 
of such slaughter among the Bavarians, she beheld the corpse 
of an artilleryman floating lazily down with the sluggish cur- 
rent. It caught among some rushes near the bank, hung 
there a moment, then swung clear and started afresh on its 
downward way. 

Bazeilles, through which they passed from end to end at a 
slow walk, afforded a spectacle of ruin and desolation, the 
worst that war can perpetrate when it sweeps with devastating 
force, like a cyclone, through a land. The dead had been 
removed; there was not a single corpse to be seen in the vil- 


THE DOWNFALL. 


369 


lage streets, and the rain had washed away the blood ; pools 
of reddish water were to be seen here and there in the road- 
way, with repulsive, frowzy-looking debris^ matted masses that 
one could not help associating in his mind with human hair. 
But what shocked and saddened one more than all the rest was 
the ruin that was visible everywhere; that charming village, 
only three days before so bright and smiling, with its pretty 
houses standing in their well-kept gardens, now razed, demol- 
ished, annihilated, nothing left of all its beauties save a few 
smoke-stained walls. The church was burning still, a huge 
pyre of smoldering beams and girders, whence streamed con- 
tinually upward a column of dense black smoke that, spread- 
ing in the heavens, overshadowed the city like a gigantic 
funeral pall. Entire streets had been swept away, not a house 
left on either side, nor any trace that houses had ever been 
there, save the calcined stone-work lying, in the gutter in a 
pasty mess of soot and ashes, the whole lost in the viscid, ink- 
black mud of the thoroughfare. Where streets intersected the 
corner houses were razed down to their foundations, as if they 
had been carried away bodily by the fiery blast that blew there. 
Others had suffered less; one in particular, owing to some 
chance, had escaped almost without injury, while its neighbors 
on either hand, literally torn to pieces by the iron hail, were 
like gaunt skeletons. An unbearable stench was everywhere 
noticeable, the nauseating odor that follows a great fire, aggra- 
vated by the penetrating smell of petroleum, that had been 
used without stint upon floors and walls. Then, too, there 
was the pitiful, mute spectacle of the household goods that the 
people had endeavored to save, the poor furniture that had 
been thrown from windows and smashed upon the sidewalk, 
crazy tables with broken legs, presses with cloven sides and 
split doors, linen, also, torn and soiled, that was trodden 
under foot; all the sorry crumbs, the unconsidered trifles of 
the pillage, of which the destruction was being completed by 
the dissolving rain. Through the breach in a shattered 
house-front a clock was visible, securely fastened high up on 
the wall above the mantel-shelf, that had miraculously escaped 
intact. 

“The beasts! the pigs!” growled Prosper, whose blood, 
though he was no longer a soldier, ran hot at the sight of such 
atrocities. 

He doubled his fists, and Silvine, who was white as a ghost, 
had to exert the influence of her glance to calm him every time 


37 ^ 


THE DOWNFALL 


they encountered a sentry on their way. The Bavarians had 
posted sentinels near all the houses that were still burning, and 
it seemed as if those men, with loaded muskets and fixed 
bayonets, were guarding the fires in order that the flames might 
finish their work. They drove away the mere sightseers who 
strolled about in the vicinity, and the persons who had an 
interest there as well, employing first a menacing gesture, and 
in case that was not sufficient, uttering a single brief, guttural 
word of command. A young woman, her hair streaming 
about her shoulders, her gown plastered with mud, persisted 
in hanging about the smoking ruins of a little house, of which 
she desired to search the hot ashes, notwithstanding the prohi- 
bition of the sentry. The report ran that the woman’s little 
baby had been burned with the house. And all at once, as 
the Bavarian was roughly thrusting her aside with his heavy 
hand, she turned on him, vomiting in his face all her despair 
and rage, lashing him with taunts and insults that were redo- 
lent of the gutter, with obscene words which likely afforded 
her some consolation in her grief and distress. He could not 
have understood her, for he drew back a pace or two, eying 
her with apprehension. Three comrades came running up and 
relieved him of the fury, whom they led away screaming at the 
top of her voice. Before the ruins of another house a man 
and two little girls, all three so weary and miserable that they 
could not stand, lay on the bare ground, sobbing as if their 
hearts would break ; they had seen their little all go up in smoke 
and flame, and had no place to go, no place to lay their head. 
But just then a patrol went by, dispersing the knots of idlers, 
and the street again assumed its deserted aspect, peopled only 
by the stern, sullen sentries, vigilant to see that their iniquitous 
instructions were enforced. 

“The beasts! the pigs!’’ Prosper repeated in a stifled voice. 
“How I should like, oh! how I should like to kill a few of 
them ! ’’ 

Silvine again made him be silent. She shuddered. A dog, 
shut up in a carriage-house that the flames had spared and for- 
gotten there for the last two days, kept up an incessant, con- 
tinuous howling, in a key so inexpressibly mournful that a 
brooding horror seemed to pervade the low, leaden sky, from 
which a drizzling rain had now begun to fall. They were 
then just abreast of the park of Montivilliers, and there they 
witnessed a most horrible sight. Three great covered carts, 
those carts that pass along the streets in the early morning 


THE DOWNFALL. 


371 


before it is light and collect the city’s filth and garbage, stood 
there in a row, loaded with corpses; and now, instead of 
refuse, they were being filled with dead, stopping wherever 
there was a body to be loaded, then going on again with the 
heavy rumbling of their wheels to make another stop further 
on, threading Bazeilles in its every nook and corner until their 
hideous cargo overflowed. They were waiting now upon the 
public road to be driven to the place of their discharge, the 
neighboring potter’s field. Feet were seen projecting from 
the mass into the air. A head, half-severed from its trunk, 
hung over the side of the vehicle. When the three lumbering 
vans started again, swaying and jolting over the inequalities of 
the road, a long, white hand was hanging outward from one of 
them ; the hand caught upon the wheel, and little by little the 
iron tire destroyed it, eating through skin and flesh clean 
down to the bones. 

By the time they reached Balan the rain had ceased, and 
Prosper prevailed on Silvine to eat a bit of the bread he had 
had the foresight to bring with them. When they were near 
Sedan, however, they were brought to a halt by another Prus- 
sian post, and this time the consequences threatened to be 
serious; the officer stormed at them, and even refused to 
restore their pass, which he declared, in excellent French, to 
be a forgery. Acting on his orders some soldiers had run the 
donkey and the little cart under a shed. What were they to 
do? were they to be forced to abandon their undertaking? 
Silvine was in despair, when all at once she thought of 
M. Dubreuil, Father Fouchard’s relative, with whom she had 
some slight acquaintance and whose place, the Hermitage, was 
only a few hundred yards distant, on the summit of the emi- 
nence that overlooked the faubourg. Perhaps he might have 
some influence with the military, seeing that he was a citizen 
of the place. As they were allowed their freedom, condition- 
ally upon abandoning their equipage, she left the donkey and 
cart under the shed and bade Prosper accompany her. They 
ascended the hill on a run, found the gate of the Hermitage 
standing wide open, and on turning into the avenue of secular 
elms beheld a spectacle that filled them with amazement. 

“The devil!’’ said Prosper; “there are a lot of fellows who 
seem to be taking things easy!’’ 

On the fine-crushed gravel of the terrace, at the bottom of 
the steps that led to the house, was a merry company. Ar- 
ranged in order around a marble-topped table were a sofa and 


372 


THE DOWNFALL. 


some easy-chairs in sky-blue satin, forming a sort of fantastic 
open-air drawing-room, which must have been thoroughly 
soaked by the rain of the preceding day. Two zouaves, 
seated in a lounging attitude at either end of the sofa, seemed 
to be laughing boisterously. A little infantryman, who occu- 
pied one of the fauteuils, his head bent forward, was apparently 
holding his sides to keep them from splitting. Three others 
were seated in a negligent pose, their elbows resting on the arms 
of their chairs, while a chasseur had his hand extended as if in 
the act of taking a glass from the table. They had evidently 
discovered the location of the cellar, and were enjoying them- 
selves. 

“But how in the world do they happen to be here?’' mur- 
mured Prosper, whose stupefaction increased as he drew nearer 
to them. “Have the rascals forgotten there are Prussians 
about?’’ 

But Silvine, whose eyes had dilated far beyond their natural 
size, suddenly uttered an exclamation of horror. The soldiers 
never moved hand or foot; they were stone dead. The two 
zouaves were stiff and cold ; they both had had the face shot 
away, the nose was gone, the eyes were torn from their sockets. 
If there appeared to be a laugh on the face of him who was 
holding his sides, it was because a bullet had cut a great fur- 
row through the lower portion of his countenance, smashing 
all his teeth. The spectacle was an unimaginably horrible one, 
those poor wretches laughing and conversing in their attitude 
of manikins, with glassy eyes and open mouths, when Death 
had laid his icy hand on them and they were never more to 
know the warmth and motion of life. Had they dragged 
themselves, still living, to that place, so as to die in one anoth- 
er’s company? or was it not rather a ghastly prank of the 
Prussians, who had collected the bodies and placed them in a 
circle about the table, out of derision for the traditional gayety 
of the French nation? 

“It’s a queer start, though, all the same,’’ muttered Pros- 
per, whose face was very pale. And casting a look at the 
other dead who lay scattered about the avenue, under the 
trees and on the turf, some thirty brave fellows, among them 
Lieutenant Rochas, riddled with wounds and surrounded still 
by the shreds of the flag, he added seriously and with great 
respect: “There must have been some very pretty fighting 
about here! I don’t much believe we shall find the bourgeois 
for whom you are looking.’’ 


THE DOWNFALL. 


373 


Silvine entered the house, the doors and windows of which 
had been battered in and afforded admission to the damp, cold 
air from without. It was clear enough that there was no one 
there; the masters must have taken their departure before the 
battle. She continued to prosecute her search; however, and 
had entered the kitchen, when she gave utterance to another 
cry of terror. Beneath the sink were two bodies, fast locked 
in each other’s arms in mortal embrace, one of them a zouave, 
a handsome, brown-bearded man, the other a huge Prussian 
with red hair. The teeth of the former were set in the latter’s 
cheek, their arms, stiff in death, had not relaxed their terrible 
hug, binding the pair with such a bond of everlasting hate and 
fury that ultimately it was found necessary to bury them in a 
common grave. 

Then Prosper made haste to lead Silvine away, since they 
could accomplish nothing in that house where Death had taken 
up his abode, and upon their return, despairing, to the post 
where the donkey and cart had been detained, it so chanced 
that they found, in company with the officer who had treated 
them so harshly, a general on his way to visit the battlefield. 
This gentleman requested to be allowed to see the pass, which 
he examined attentively and restored to Silvine; then, with an 
expression of compassion on his face, he gave directions that 
the poor woman should have her donkey returned to her and 
be allowed to go in quest of her husband’s body. Stopping 
only long enough to thank her benefactor, she and her com- 
panion, with the cart trundling after them, set out for the 
Fond de Givonne, obedient to the instructions that were again 
given them not to pass through Sedan. 

After that they bent their course to the left in order to reach 
the plateau of Illy by the road that crosses the wood of* la 
Garenne, but here again they were delayed; twenty times they 
nearly abandoned all hope of getting through the wood, so 
numerous were the obstacles they encountered. At every step 
their way was barred by huge trees that had been laid low by 
the artillery fire, stretched on the ground like mighty giants 
fallen. It was the part of the forest that had suffered so 
severely from the cannonade, where the projectiles had plowed 
their way through the secular growths as they might have done 
through a square of the Old Guard, meeting in either case with 
the sturdy resistance of veterans. Everywhere the earth was 
cumbered with gigantic trunks, stripped of their leaves and 
branches, pierced and mangled, even as mortals might have 


374 


THE DOWNFALL. 


been, and this wholesale destruction, the sight of the poor 
limbs, maimed, slaughtered and weeping tears of sap, inspired 
the beholder with the sickening horror of a human battlefield. 
There were corpses of men there, too; soldiers, who had stood 
fraternally by the trees and fallen with them. A lieutenant, 
from whose mouth exuded a bloody froth, had been tearing up 
the grass by handfuls in his agony, and his stiffened fingers 
were still buried in the ground. A little farther on a captain, 
prone on his stomach, had raised his head to vent his anguish 
in yells and screams, and death had caught and fixed him in 
that strange attitude. Others seemed to be slumbering among 
the herbage, while a zouave, whose blue sash had taken fire, 
had had his hair and beard burned completely from his head. 
And several times it happened, as they traversed those wood- 
land glades, that they had to remove a body from the path 
before the donkey could proceed on his way. Presently they 
came to a little valley, where the sights of horror abruptly 
ended. The battle had evidently turned at this point and 
expended its force in another direction, leaving this peaceful 
nook of nature untouched. The trees were all uninjured; the 
carpet of velvety moss was undefiled by blood. A little brook 
coursed merrily among the duckweed, the path that ran along 
its bank was shaded by tall beeches. A penetrating charm, a 
tender peacefulness pervaded the solitude of the lovely spot, 
where the living waters gave up their coolness to the air and 
the leaves whispered softly in the silence. 

Prosper had stopped to let the donkey drink from the stream. 

“Ah, how pleasant it is here!” he involuntarily exclaimed 
in his delight. 

Silvine cast an astonished look about her, as if wondering 
how it was that she, too, could feel the influence of the peace- 
ful scene. Why should there be repose and happiness in that 
hidden nook, when surrounding it on every side were sorrow 
and affliction? She made a gesture of impatience. 

“Quick, quick, let us be gone. Where is the spot? Where 
did you tell me you saw Honor^?” 

And when, at some fifty paces from there, they at last came 
out on the plateau of Illy, the level plain unrolled itself in its 
full extent before their vision. It was the real, the true battle- 
field that they beheld now, the bare fields stretching away to 
the horizon under the wan, cheerless sky, whence showers were 
streaming down continually. There were no piles of dead 
visible; all the Prussians must have been buried by this time, 


THE DOWNEALE 


375 


for there was not a single one to be seen among the corpses of 
the French that were scattered here and there, along the roads 
and in the fields, as the conflict had swayed in one direction or 
another. The first that they encountered was a sergeant, 
propped against a hedge, a superb man, in the bloom of his 
youthful vigor; his face was tranquil and a smile seemed to 
rest on his parted lips. A hundred paces further on, however, 
they beheld another, lying across the road, who had been 
mutilated most frightfully, his head almost entirely shot away, 
his shoulders covered with great splotches of brain matter. 
Then, as they advanced further into the field, after the single 
bodies, distributed here and there, they came across little 
groups; they saw seven men aligned in single rank, kneeling 
and with their muskets at the shoulder in the position of aim, 
who had been hit as they were about to fire, while close beside 
them a subaltern had also fallen as he was in the act of giving 
the word of command. After that the road led along the 
brink of a little ravine, and there they beheld a spectacle that 
aroused their horror to the highest pitch as they looked down 
into the chasm, into which an entire company seemed to have 
been blown by the fiery blast; it was choked with corpses, a 
landslide, an avalanche of maimed and mutilated men, bent 
and twisted in an inextricable tangle, who with convulsed fingers 
had caught at the yellow clay of the bank to save themselves 
in their descent, fruitlessly. And a dusky flock of ravens flew 
away, croaking noisily, and swarms of flies, thousands upon 
thousands of them, attracted by the odor of fresh blood, were 
buzzing over the bodies and returning incessantly. 

“Where is the spot?” Silvine asked again. 

They were then passing a plowed field that was completely 
covered with knapsacks. It was manifest that some regiment 
had been roughly handled there, and the men, in a moment of 
panic, had relieved themselves of their burdens. The debris 
of every sort with which the ground was thickly strewn served 
to explain the episodes of the conflict. There was a stubble 
field where the scattered kipis^ resembling huge poppies, 
shreds of uniforms, epaulettes, and sword-belts told the story 
of one of those infrequent hand-to-hand contests in the fierce 
artillery duel that had lasted twelve hours. But the objects that 
were encountered most frequently, at every step, in fact, were 
abandoned weapons, sabers, bayonets, and, more particularly, 
chassepots; and so numerous were they that they seemed to 
have sprouted from the earth, a harvest that had matured in a 


THE DOWNFALL. 


37<5 

single ill-omened day. Porringers and buckets, also, were 
scattered along the roads, together with the heterogeneous 
contents of knapsacks, rice, brushes, clothing, cartridges. The 
fields everywhere presented an uniform scene of devastation: 
fences destroyed, trees blighted as if they had been struck by 
lightning, the very soil itself torn by shells, compacted and 
hardened by the tramp of countless feet, and so maltreated 
that it seemed as if seasons must elapse before it could again 
become productive. Everything had been drenched and 
soaked by the rain of the preceding day; an odor arose and 
hung in the air persistently, that odor of the battlefield that 
smells like fermenting straw and burning cloth, a mixture of 
rottenness and gunpowder. 

Silvine, who was beginning to weary of those fields of death 
over which she had tramped so many long miles, looked about 
her with increasing distrust and uneasiness. 

“ Where is the spot? where is it?” 

But Prosper made no answer; he also was becoming uneasy. 
What distressed him even more than the sights of suffering 
among his fellow-soldiers was the dead horses, the poor brutes 
that lay outstretched upon their side, that were met with in 
great numbers. Many of them presented a most pitiful spec- 
tacle, in all sorts of harrowing attitudes, with heads torn from 
the body, with lacerated flanks from which the entrails pro- 
truded. Many were resting on their back, with their four feet 
elevated in the air like signals of distress. The entire extent 
of the broad plain was dotted with them. There were some 
that death had not released after their two days’ agony; at the 
faintest sound they would raise their head, turning it eagerly 
from right to left, then let it fall again upon the ground, while 
others lay motionless and momentarily gave utterance to that 
shrill scream which one who has heard it can never forget, 
the lament of the dying horse, so piercingly mournful that 
earth and heaven seemed to shudder in unison with it. And 
Prosper, with a bleeding heart, thought of poor Zephyr, and 
told himself that perhaps he might see him once again. 

Suddenly he became aware that the ground was trembling 
under the thundering hoof-beats of a headlong charge. He 
turned to look, and had barely time to shout to his companion : 

“ The horses, the horses ! Get behind that wall ! ” 

From the summit of a neighboring eminence a hundred 
riderless horses, some of them still bearing the saddle and 
master’s kit, were plunging down upon them at break-neck 


7^nE DOWNPALL. 


377 


speed. They were cavalry mounts that had lost their masters 
and remained on the battlefield, and instinct had counseled 
them to associate together in a band. 'I'hey had had neither 
hay nor oats for two days, and had cropped the scanty grass 
from off the plain, shorn the hedge-rows of leaves and twigs, 
gnawed the bark from the trees, and wlien they felt the pangs 
of hunger pricking at their vitals like a keen spur, they started 
all together at a mad gallop and charged across the deserted, 
silent fields, crushing the dead out of all human shape, ex- 
tinguishing the last spark of life in the wounded. 

The band came on like a whirlwind ; Silvine had only time 
to pull the donkey and cart to one side where they would be 
protected by the wall. 

“ Mon Dieu ! we shall be killed ! " 

But the horses had taken the obstacle in their stride and 
were already scouring away in the distance on the other side 
with a, rumble like that of a receding thunder-storm ; striking 
into a sunken road they pursued it as far as the corner of a 
little wood, behind which they were lost to sight. 

Silvine, when she had brought the cart back into the road, 
insisted that Prosper should answer her question before they 
proceeded further. 

“ Come, where is it? You tj)ld me you could find the spot 
with your eyes bandaged ; where is it? We have reached the 
ground.” 

He, drawing himself up and anxiously scanning the horizon 
in every direction, seemed to become more and more per- 
plexed. 

“ There were three trees, I must find those three trees in the 
first place. Ah, dame! see here, one’s sight is not of the 
clearest when he is fighting, and it is no such easy matter to 
remember afterward the roads one has passed over ! ” 

Then perceiving people to his left, two men and a woman, it 
occurred to him to question them, but the woman ran away at 
his approach and the men repulsed him with threatening 
gestures ; and he saw others of the same stripe, clad in sordid 
rags, unspeakably filthy, with the ill-favored faces of thieves 
and murderers, and they all shunned him, slinking away among 
the corpses like jackals or other unclean, creeping beasts. 
Then he noticed that wherever these villainous gentry passed 
the dead behind them were shoeless, their bare, white feet ex- 
posed, devoid of covering, and he saw how it was : they were 
the tramps and thugs who followed the German armies for the 


37 ^ 


THE DOWNFALL, 


sake of plundering the dead, the detestable crew who followed 
in the wake of the invasion in order that they might reap their 
harvest from the field of blood. A tall, lean fellow arose in 
front of him and scurried away on a run, a sack slung across 
his shoulder, the watches and small coins, proceeds of his rob- 
beries, jingling in his pockets. 

A boy about fourteen or fifteen years old, however, allowed 
Prosper to approach him, and when the latter, seeing him to be 
French, rated him soundly, the boy spoke up in his defense. 
What, was it wrong for a poor fellow to earn his living ? He 
was collecting chassepots, and received five sous for every 
chassepot he brought in. He had run away from his village 
that morning, having eaten nothing since the day before, and 
engaged himself to a contractor from Luxembourg, who had 
an arrangement with the Prussians by virtue of which he was to 
gather the muskets from the field of battle, the Germans fear^ 
■ing that should the scattered arms be collected' by the peasants 
of the frontier, they might be conveyed into Belgium and 
thence find their way back to France. And so it was that 
there was quite a flock of poor devils hunting for muskets and 
earning their five sous, rummaging among the herbage, like the 
women who may be seen in the meadows, bent nearly double, 
gathering dandelions. { 

“It’s a dirty business,” Prosper growled. 

“ What would you have ! A chap must eat,” the boy replied. 

“ I am not robbing anyone.” 

Then, as he did not belong to that neighborhood and could 
not give the information that Prosper wanted, he pointed out a 
little farmhouse not far away where he had seen some people 
stirring. 

Prosper thanked him and was moving away to rejoin Silvine 
when he caught sight of a chassepot, partially buried in a fur- 
row. His first thought was to say nothing of his discovery ; 
then he turned about suddenly and shouted, as if he could not 
help it ; 

“ Hallo ! here’s one ; that will make five sous more for you.” 

As they approached the farmhouse Silvine noticed other 
peasants engaged with spades and picks in digging long 
trenches ; but these men were under the direct command of 
Prussian officers, who, with nothing more formidable than a 
light walking-stick in their hands, stood by, stiff and silent, and 
superintended the work. They had requisitioned the inhab- 
itants of all the villages of the vicinity in this manner, fear- 


THE DOWNFALL. 


379 


ing that decomposition might be hastened, owing to the rainy 
weather. Two cart-loads of dead bodies were standing near, 
and a gang of men was unloading them, laying the corpses side 
by side in close contiguity to one another, not searching them, 
not even looking at their faces, while two men followed after, 
equipped with great shovels, and covered the row with a 
layer of earth, so thin that the ground had already begun to 
crack beneath the showers. The work was so badly and 
hastily done that before two weeks should have elapsed each 
of those fissures would be breathing forth pestilence. Silvine 
could not resist the impulse to pause at the brink of the trench 
and look at those pitiful corpses as they were brought for- 
ward, one after another. She was possessed by a horrible fear 
that in each fresh body the men brought from the cart she 
might recognize Honore. Was not that he, that poor wretch 
whose left eye had been destroyed ? No ! Perhaps that one 
with the fractured jaw was he? The one thing certain to her 
mind was that if she did not make haste to find him, wherever 
he might be on that boundless, indeterminate plateau, they 
would pick him up and bury him in a common grave with the 
others. She therefore hurried to rejoin Prosper, who had gone 
on to the farmhouse with the cart. 

“ Mon Dieu ! how is it that you are not better informed ? 
Where is the place ? Ask the people, question them.” 

There were none but Prussians at the farm, however, together 
with a woman servant and her child, just come in from the 
woods, where they had been near perishing of thirst and hunger. 
The scene was one of patriarchal simplicity and well-earned 
repose after the fatigues of the last few days. Some of the 
soldiers had hung their uniforms from a clothes-line and were 
giving them a thorough brushing, another was putting a patch 
on his trousers, with great neatness and dexterity, while the 
cook of the detachment had built a great fire in the middle of 
the courtyard on which the soup was boiling in a huge pot 
from which ascended a most appetizing odor of cabbage and 
bacon. There is no denying that the Prussians generally dis- 
played great moderation toward the inhabitants of the country 
after the conquest, which was made the easier to them by the 
spirit of discipline that prevailed among the troops. These 
men might have been taken for peaceable citizens just come in 
from their daily avocations, smoking their long pipes. On a 
bench beside the door sat a stout, red-bearded man, who had 
taken up the servant’s child, a little urchin five or six years old, 


380 


THE DOWNFALL. 


and was dandling it and talking baby-talk to it in German, 
delighted to see the little one laugh at the harsh syllables which 
it could not understand. 

Prosper, fearing there might be more trouble in store for 
them, had turned his back on the soldiers immediately on 
entering, but those Prussians were really good fellows ; they 
smiled at the little donkey, and did not even trouble themselves 
to ask for a sight of the pass. 

Then ensued a wild, aimless scamper across the bosom of 
the great, sinister plain. The sun, now sinking rapidly toward 
the horizon, showed its face for a moment from between two 
clouds. Was night to descend and surprise them in the midst 
of that vast charnel-house ? Another shower came down ; 
the sun was obscured, the rain and mist formed an impenetra- 
ble barrier about them, so that the country around, roads, fields, 
trees, was shut out from their vision. Prosper knew not where 
they were ; he was lost, and admitted it : his memory was all 
astray, he could recall nothing precise of the occurrences of 
that terrible day but one before. Behind them, his head 
lowered almost to the ground, the little donkey trotted along 
resignedly, dragging the cart, with his customary docility. 
First they took a northerly course, then they returned toward 
Sedan. They had lost their bearings and could not tell in 
which direction they were going ; twice they noticed that they 
were passing localities that they had passed before and retraced 
their steps. They had doubtless been traveling in a circle, and 
there came a moment when in their exhaustion and despair 
they stopped at a place where three roads met, without courage 
to pursue their search further, the rain pelting down on them, 
lost and utterly miserable in the midst of a sea of mud. 

But they heard the sound of groans, and hastening to a 
lonely little house on their left, found there, in one of the bed- 
rooms, two wounded men. All the doors were standing open ; 
the two unfortunates had succeeded in dragging themselves thus 
far and had thrown themselves on the beds, and for the two 
days that they had been alternately shivering and burning, their 
wounds having received no attention, they had seen no one, not 
a living soul. They were tortured by a consuming thirst, and 
the beating of the rain against the window-panes added to their 
torment, but they could not move hand or foot. Hence, when 
they heard Silvine approaching, the first word that escaped 
their lips was : “ Drink ! Give us to drink ! " that longing, 

pathetic cry, with which the wounded always pursue the by* 


TI/E DOIVNEALI. 


381 

passer whenever the sound of footsteps arouses "them from 
their lethargy. There were many cases similar to this, where 
men were overlooked in remote corners, whither they had fled 
for refuge. Some were picked up even five and six days later, 
when their sores were filled with maggots and their sufferings 
had rendered them delirious. 

When Silvine had given the, wretched men a drink Prosper, 
who, in the more sorely injured of the twain, had recognized a 
comrade of his regiment, a chasseur d'Afrique, saw that they 
could not be far from the ground over which Margueritte’s di- 
vision had charged, inasmuch as the poor devil had been able 
to drag himself to that house. All the information he could 
get from him, however, was of the vaguest ; yes, it was over 
that way ; you turned to the left, after passing a big field of 
potatoes. 

Immediately she was in possession of this slender clue Sil- 
vine insisted on starting out again. An inferior officer of the 
medical department chanced to pass with a cart just then, col- 
lecting the dead ; she hailed him and notified him of the pres- 
ence of the wounded men, then, throwing the donkej^s bridle 
across her arm, urged him along over the muddy road^eager to 
reach the designated spot, beyond the big potato field. When 
they had gone some distance she stopped, yielding to her despair. 

My God, where is the place ! Where can it be ?” 

Prosper looked about him,, taxing his recollection fruitlessly. 

“ I told you, it is close beside the place where we made our 
charge. If only I could find my poor Zephyr ” 

And he cast a wistful look on the dead horses that lay around 
them. It had been his secret hope, his dearest wish, during the 
entire time they had been wandering over the plateau, to see 
his mount once more, to bid him a last farewell. 

“ It ought to be somewhere in this vicinity,” he suddenly 
said. “ See ! over there to the left, there are tlie three trees. 
You see the wheel-tracks? And, look, over yonder is a broken- 
down caisson. We have found the spot ; we are here at last !” 

Quivering with emotion, Silvine darted forward and eagerly 
scanned the faces of two corpses, two artillerymen who had 
fallen by the roadside. 

“ He is not here ! He is not here ! You cannot have seen 
aright. Yes, that is it ; some delusion must have cheated your 
eyes.” And little by little an air-drawn hope, a wild delight 
crept into her mind. “ If you were mistaken, if he should be 
alive ! And be sure he is alive, since he is not here ! ” 


THE DOWNEALL, 


382 


Suddenly she gave utterance to a low, smothered cry. She 1 
had turned, and was standing on the very position that the 
battery had occupied. The scene was most frightful, the 
ground torn and fissured as by an earthquake and covered with 
wreckage of every description, the dead lying as they had fallen ' 
in every imaginable attitude of horror, arms bent and twisted, _ 
legs doubled under them, heads thrown back, the lips parted , 
over^the white teeth as if their last breath had been expended - 
in shouting defiance to the foe. A corporal had died with his ' 
hands pressed convulsively to his eyes, unable longer to endure 
the dread spectacle. Some gold coins that a lieutenant carried ^ 
in a belt about his body had been spilled at the same time as 
his life-blood, and lay scattered among his entrails. There 
were Adolphe, the driver, and the gunner, Louis, clasped in \ 
each other’s arms in a fierce embrace, their sightless orbs start- ^ 
ing from their sockets, mated even in death. And there, at \ 
last, was Honore, recumbent on his disabled gun as on a bed j 
of honor, with the great rent in his side that had let out his i 
young life, his face, unmutilated and beautiful in its stern ^ 
anger, still turned defiantly toward the Prussian batteries. j 

“ Oh ! my friend,” sobbed Silvine, “ my friend, my \ 
friend ” i 

She had fallen to her knees on ' the damp, cold ground, her j 
hands joined as if in prayer, in an outburst of frantic grief. I 
The vvord friend, the only name by which it occurred to her to 3 
address him, told the story of the tender affection she had lost i 
in that man, so good, so loving, who had forgiven her, had ] 
meant to make her his wife, despite the ugly past. And now all i 
hope was dead within her bosom, there was nothing left to 
make life desirable. She had never loved another ; she would 1 
put away her love for him at the bottom of her heart and hold 
it sacred there. The rain had ceased ; a flock of crows that 
circled above the three trees, croaking dismally, affected her 
like a menace of evil. Was he to be taken from her again, her 
cherished dead, whom she had recovered with such difficulty ? 
She dragged herself along upon her knees, and with a trembling 
hand brushed away the hungry flies that were buzzing about , 
her friend’s wide-open eyes. 

She caught sight of a bit of blood-stained paper betw'^en 
Honore’s stiffened fingers. It troubled her ; she tried to gain 
possession of the paper, pulling at it gently, but the dead man 
would not surrender it, seemingly tightening his hold on it, , 
guarding it so jealously that it could not have been taken from ^ 




THE DOWNFALL. 


383 


him without tearing it in bits. It was the letter she had written 
him, that he had always carried next his heart, and that he had 
taken from its hiding place in the moment of his supreme 
agony, as if to bid her a last farewell. It seemed so strange, 
was such a revelation, that he should have died thinking of 
her ; when she saw what it was a profound delight filled her 
soul in the midst of her affliction. Yes, surely, she would leave 
it with him, the letter that was so dear to him ! she would not 
take it from him, since he was so bent on carrying it with him 
to the grave. Her tears flowed afresh, but they were beneficent 
tears this time, and brought healing and comfort with them. 
She arose and kissed his hands, kissed him on the forehead, 
uttering meanwhile but that one word, which was in itself a 
prolonged caress : 

“ My friend ! my friend ” 

Meantime the sun was declining ; Prosper had gone and 
taken the counterpane from the cart, and between them they 
raised Honore’s body, slowly, reverently, and laid it on the 
bed-covering, which they had stretched upon the ground ; then, 
first wrapping him in its folds, they bore him to the cart. It 
was threatening to rain again, and they had started on their 
return, forming, with the donkey, a sorrowful little cortege on 
the broad bosom of the accursed plain, when a deep rumbling 
as of thunder was heard in the distance. Prosper turned his 
head and had only time to shout : 

“ The horses ! the horses ! ” 

It was the starving, abandoned cavalry mounts making an- 
other charge. They came up this time in a deep mass across 
a wide, smooth field, manes and tails streaming in the wind, 
froth flying from their nostrils, and the level rays of the fiery 
setting sun sent the shadow of the infuriated herd clean across 
the plateau. Silvine rushed forward and planted herself be- 
fore the cart, raising her arms above her head as if her puny 
form might have power to check them. Fortunately the 
ground fell off just at that point, causing them to swerve to the 
left ; otherwise they would have crushed donkey, cart, and all 
to powder. The earth trembled, and their hoofs sent a volley 
of clods and small stones flying through the air, one of which 
struck the donkey on the head and wounded him. The last 
that was seen of them they were tearing down a ravine. 

“ It’s hunger that starts them off like that,” said Prosper. 
“ Poor beasts ! ” 

Silvine, having bandaged the donkey’s ear with her handker 


sH 


THE DOWNFALL. 


chief, took him again by the bridle, and the mournful little 
procession Jjegan to retrace its steps across the plateau, to 
cover the two leagues that lay between it and Remilly. Pros- 
per had turned and cast a look on the dead horses, his heart 
heavy within him to leave the field without having seen 
Zephyr. 

A little below the wood of la Garenne, as they were about to 
turn off to the left to take the road that they had traversed 
that morning, they encountered another German post and were 
again obliged to exhibit their pass. And the officer in com- 
mand, instead of telling them to avoid Sedan, ordered them to 
keep straight on their course and pass through the city; other- 
wise they would be arrested. This was the most recent or- 
der ; it was not for them to question it. Moreover, their jour- 
ney would be shortened by a mile and a quarter, which they 
did not regret, weary and foot-sore as they were. 

When they were within Sedan, however, they found their 
progress retarded owing to a singular cause. As soon as they 
had passed the fortifications their nostrils were saluted by such 
a stench, they were obliged to wade through such a mass of 
abominable filth, reaching almost to theii knees, as fairly 
turned their stomachs. The city, where for three days a hun- 
dred thousand men had lived without the slightest provision 
being made for decency or cleanliness, had become acesspooi, a 
foul sewer, and this devil’s broth was thickened by all sorts of 
solid matter, rotting hay and straw, stable litter, and the excreta 
of animals. The carcasses of the horses, too, that were 
knocked on the head, skinned, and cut up in the public squares, 
in full view of everyone, had their full share in contaminating 
the atmosphere ; the entrails lay decaying in the hot sunshine, 
the bones and heads were left lying on the pavement, where 
they attracted swarms of flies. Pestilence would surely break 
out in the city unless they made haste to rid themselves of all 
that carrion, of that stratum of impurity, which, in the Rue de 
Minil, the Rue Maqua, and even on the Place Turenne, 
reached a depth of twelve inches. The Prussian authorities 
had taken the matter up, and their placards were to be seen 
posted about the city, requisitioning the inhabitants, irrespec- 
tive of rank, laborers, merchants, bourgeois, magistrates, for 
the morrow; they were ordered to assemble, armed with brooms 
and shovels, and apply themselves to the task, and were warned 
that they would be subjected to heavy penalties if the city was 
not clean by night. The President of the Tribunal had taken 


THE DOWNFALL. 


385 


time by the forelock, and might even then be seen scraping 
away at the pavement before his door and loading the results 
of his labors upon a wheelbarrow with a fire-shovel. 

Silvine and Prosper, who had selected the Grande Rue as 
their route for traversing the city, advanced but slowly through 
that lake of malodorous slime. In addition to that the place 
was in a state of ferment and agitation that made it necessary 
for them to pull up almost at every moment. It was the time 
that the Prussians had selected for searching the houses in 
order to unearth those soldiers, who, determined that they 
would not give themselves up, had hidden themselves away. 
When, at about two o’clock of the preceding day. General de 
Wimpffen had returned from the chateau of Bellevue after 
signing the capitulation, the report immediately began to cir- 
culate that the surrendered troops were to be held under guard 
in the peninsula of Iges until such time as arrangements could 
be perfected for sending them off to Germany. Some few 
officers had expressed their intention of taking advantage of 
that stipulation which accorded them their liberty conditionally 
on their signing an agreement not to serve again during the 
campaign. Only one general, so it was said, Bourgain-Des- 
feuilles, alleging his rheumatism as a reason, had bound him- 
self by that pledge, and when, that very morning, his carriage 
had driven up to the door of the hotel of the Golden Cross 
and he had taken his seat in it to leave the city, the people had 
hooted and hissed him unmercifully. The operation of dis- 
arming had been going on since break of day; the manner of 
its performance was, the troops defiled by battalions on the 
Place Turenue, where each man deposited his musket and 
bayonet on the pile, like a mountain of old iron, which kept 
rising higher and higher, in a corner of the place. There was 
a Prussian detachment there under the command of a young 
officer, a tall, pale youth, wearing a sky-blue tunic and a cap 
adorned with a cock’s feather, who superintended operations 
with a lofty but soldierlike air, his hands encased in white 
gloves. A zouave, in a fit of insubordination, having refused 
to give up his chassepot, the officer ordered that he be taken 
away, adding, in the same even tone of voice: “And let him 
be shot forthwith ! ” The rest of the battalion continued to 
defile with a sullen and dejected air, throwing down their arms 
mechanically, as if in haste to liave the ceremony ended. But 
who could estimate the number of those who had disarmed 
themselves voluntarily, those whose muskets lay scattered over 


386 


THE DOWNFALL. 


the country, out yonder on the field of battle? And how 
many, too, within the last twenty-four hours had concealed 
themselves, flattering themselves with the hope that they might 
escape in the confusion that reigned everywhere ! There was 
scarcely a house but had its crew of those headstrong idiots 
who refused to respond when called on, hiding away in corners 
and shamming death ; the German patrols that were sent 
through the city even discovered them stowed away under 
beds. And as many, even after they were unearthed, stub- 
bornly persisted in remaining in the cellars whither they had 
fled for shelter, the patrols were obliged to fire on them through 
the coal-holes. It was a man-hunt, a brutal and cruel battue, 
during which the city resounded with rifle-shots and outlandish 
oaths. 

At the Pont du Meuse they found a throng which the donkey 
was unable to penetrate and were brought to a stand-still. 
The officer commanding the guard at the bridge, suspecting 
they were endeavoring to carry on an illicit traffic in bread or 
meat, insisted on seeing with his own eyes what was contained 
in the cart ; drawing aside the covering, he gazed for an instant 
on the corpse with a' feeling expression, then motioned them to 
go their way. Still, however, they were unable to get forward, 
the crowd momentarily grew denser and denser ; one of the first 
detachments of French prisoners was being conducted to the 
peninsula of Iges under escort of a Prussian guard. The 
sorry band streamed on in long array, the men in their tattered, 
dirty uniforms crowding one another, treading on one another’s 
heels, with bowed heads and sidelong, hang-dog looks, the de- 
jected gait and bearing of the vanquished to whom had been 
left not even so much as a knife with which to cut their throat. 
The harsh, curt orders of the guard urging them forward re- 
sounded like the cracking of a whip in the silence, which was 
unbroken save for the plashing of their coarse shoes through 
the semi-liquid mud. Another shower began to fall, and there 
could be no more sorrowful sight than that band of disheart- 
ened soldiers, shuffling along through the rain, like beggars 
and vagabonds on the public highway. 

All at once Prosper, whose heart was beating as if it would 
burst his bosom with repressed sorrow and indignation, 
nudged Silvine and called her attention to two soldiers who 
were passing at the moment. He had recognized Maurice and 
Jean, trudging along with their companions, like brothers, side 
by side. They were near the end of the line, and as there was 


THE DOWNFALL. 


387 


now no impediment in their way, he was enabled to keep them 
in view as far as the Faubourg of Torcy, as they traversed the 
level road which leads to Iges between gardens and truck 
farms. 

“Ah ! “ murmured Silvine, distressed by what she had just 
seen, fixing her eyes on Honore’s body, “ it may be that the 
dead have the better part ! “ 

Night descended while they were at Wadelincourt, and it 
was pitchy dark long before they reached Remilly. Father 
Fouchard was greatly surprised to behold the body of his son, 
for he had felt certain that it would never be recovered. He 
had been attending to business during the day, and had com- 
pleted an excellent bargain ; the market price for officers' 
chargers was twenty francs, and he had bought three for forty- 
five francs. 

11 . 

^"'HE crush was so great as the column of prisoners was leay- 
1 ing Torcy that Maurice, who had stopped a moment to 
buy some tobacco, was parted from Jean, and with all his 
efforts was unable thereafter to catch up with his regiment 
through the dense masses of men that filled the road. When 
he at last reached the bridge that spans the canal which inter- 
sects the peninsula of Iges at its base, he found himself in a 
mixed company of chasseurs d’Afrique and troops of the infan- 
terie de marine. 

There were two pieces of artillery stationed at the bridge, 
their muzzles turned upon the interior of the peninsula ; it was 
a place easy of access, but from which exit would seem to be 
attended with some difficulties. Immediately beyond the 
canal was a comfortable house, where the Prussians had estab- 
lished a post, commanded by a captain, upon which devolved 
the duty of receiving and guarding the prisoners. The for- 
malities observed Avere not excessive ; they merely counted the 
men, as if they had been sheep, as they came streaming in a 
huddle across the bridge, without troubling themselves over- 
much about uniforms or organizations, after which the prisoners 
were free of the fields and at liberty to select their dwelling- 
place wherever chance and the road they were on might direct. 

The first thing that Maurice did was to address a question to 
a Bavarian officer, who was seated astride upon a chair, enjoy- 
ing a tranquil smoke. 


388 


THE downfall 


“ The To6th of the line, sir, can you tell me whefe 1 shall 
find it ? ” 

Either the officer was unlike most German officers and did 
not understand French, or thought it a good joke to mystify a 
poor devil of a soldier. He smiled and raised his hand, indi- 
cating by his motion that the other was to keep following the 
road he was pursuing. 

Although Maurice had spent a good part- of his life in the 
neighborhood he had never before been on the peninsula ; he 
proceeded to explore his new surroundings, as a mariner might 
do when cast by a tempest on the shore of a desolate island. 
He first skirted the Tour a Glaire, a very handsome country- 
place, whose small park, situated as it was on the bank of the 
Meuse, possessed a peculiarly attractive charm. After that the 
road ran parallel with the river, of which the sluggish current 
flowed on the right hand at the foot of high, steep banks. The 
way from there was a gradually ascending one, until it wound 
around the gentle eminence that occupied the central portion 
of the peninsula, and there were abandoned quarries there and 
excavations in the ground, in which a network of narrow paths 
had their termination. iV little further on was a mill, seated 
on the border of the stream. Then the road curved and pur- 
sued a descending course until it entered the village of Iges, 
which was built on the hillside and connected by a ferry with 
the further shore, just opposite the rope-walk at Saint-Albert. 
Last of all came meadows and cultiv,ated fields, a broad 
expanse of level, treeless country, around which the river 
swept in a wide, circling bend. In vain had Maurice scruti- 
nized every inch of uneven ground on the hillside ; all he could 
distinguish there was cavalry and artillery, preparing their 
quarters for the night. He made further inquiries, applying 
among others to a corporal of chasseurs d’Afrique, who could 
give him no information. The prospect for finding his regi- 
ment looked bad ; night was coming down, and, leg-weary and 
disheartened, he seated himself for a moment on a stone by 
the wayside. 

As he sat there, abandoning himself to the sensation of loneli- 
ness and despair that crept over him, he beheld before him, 
across the Meuse, the accursed fields where he had fought the 
day but one before. Bitter memories rose to his mind, in the 
fading light of that day of gloom and rain, as he surveyed the 
saturated, miry expanse of country that rose from the river’s 
bank and was lost on the horizon. The defile of Saint-Albert, 


THE DOWNFALL. 


389 


the narrow road by which the Prussians had gained their rear, 
ran along the bend of the stream as far as the white cliffs of 
the quarries of Montimont. The summits of the trees in the 
wood of la Falizette rose in rounded, fleecy masses over the 
rising ground of Seugnon. Directly before his eyes, a little to 
the left, was Saint-Menges, the road from which descended by 
a gentle slope and ended at the ferry ; there, too, were the 
mamelon of Hattoy in the center, and Illy, in the far distance, 
in the background, and Fleigneux, almost hidden in its shal- 
low vale, and Floing, less remote, on the eight. He recog- 
nized the plateau where he had spent interminable hours among 
the cabbages, and the eminences that the reserve artillery had 
struggled so gallantly to hold, where he had seen Honors meet 
his death on his dismounted gun. And it was as if the bale- 
ful scene were again before him with all its abominations, steep- 
ing his mind in horror and disgust, until he was sick at heart. 

The reflection that soon it would be quite dark and it would 
not do to loiter there, however, caused him to resume his re- 
searches. He said to himself that perhaps the regiment was 
encamped somewhere beyond the village on the low ground, 
but the only ones he encountered there were some prowlers, 
and he decided to make the circuit of the peninsula, following 
the bend of the stream. As he was passing through a field of 
potatoes he was sufficiently thoughtful to dig a few of the 
tubers and put them" in his pockets ; they were not ripe, but he 
had nothing better, for Jean, as luck would have it, had insisted 
on carrying both the two loaves of bread that Delaherche had 
given them when they left his house. He was somewhat sur- 
prised at the number of horses he met with, roaming about the 
uncultivated lands, that fell off ‘in an easy descent from the 
central elevation to the Meuse, in the direction of Donchery. 
Why should they have brought all those animals with them ? 
how were they to be fed ? And now it was night in earnest, 
and quite dark, when he came to a small piece of woods on the 
water’s brink, in which he -was surprised to find the cent- 
gardes of the Emperor’s escort, providing for their creature 
comforts and drying themselves before roaring fires. These 
gentlemen, who had a separate encampment to themselves, had 
comfortable tents ; thoir kettles were boiling merrily, there 
was a milch cow tied to a tree. It did not take Maurice long 
to see that he was not regarded with favor in that quarter, poor 
devil of an infantryman that he was, with his ragged, mud- 
stained uniform. They graciously accorded him permission 


390 


THE DOWNFALL. 


to roast his potatoes in the ashes of their fires, however, and 
he withdrew to the shelter of a tree, some hundred yards away, 
to eat them. It was no longer raining ; the sky was clear, the 
stars were shining brilliantly in the dark blue vault. He saw 
that he should have to spend the night in the open air and 
defer his researches until the morrow. He was so utterly used 
up that he could go no further ; the trees would afford him 
some protection in case it came on to rain again. 

The strangeness of his situation, however, and the thought 
of his vast prison house, open to the winds of heaven, would 
not let him sleep. It had been an extremely clever move on 
the part of the Prussians to select that place of confinement for 
the eighty thousand men who constituted the remnant of the 
army of Chalons. The peninsula was approximately three 
miles long by one wide, affording abundant space for the 
broken fragments of the vanquished host, and Maurice could 
not fail to observe that it was surrounded on every side by 
water, the bend of the Meuse encircling it on the north, east 
and west, while on the south, at the base, connecting the two 
arms of the loop at the point where they drew together most 
closely, was the canal. Here alone was an outlet, the bridge, 
that was defended by two guns ; wherefore it may be seen that 
the guarding of the camp was a comparatively easy task, not- 
withstanding its great extent. He had already taken note of 
the chain of sentries on the farther bank, a soldier being sta- 
tioned by the waterside at every fifty pac^s, with orders to fire 
on any man who should attempt to escape by swimming. In 
the rear the different posts were connected by patrols of uhlans, 
while further in the distance,, scattered over the broad fields, 
were the dark lines of the Prussian regiments; a threefold 
living, moving wall, immuring the captive army. 

Maurice, in his sleeplessness, lay gazing with wide-open eyes 
into the blackness of the night, illuminated here and there by 
the smoldering watch-fires ; the motionless forms of the senti- 
nels were dimly visible beyond the pale ribbon of the Meuse. 
Erect they stood, duskier spots against the dusky shadows, be- 
neath the faint light of the twinkling stars, and at regular inter- 
vals their guttural call came to his ears, a menacing watch-cry 
that was drowned in the hoarse murmur of the river in the dis- 
tance. At sound of those unmelodious phrases in a foreign 
tongue, rising on the still air of a starlit night in the sunny land 
of France, the vision of the past again rose before him : all that 
he had beheld in memory an hour before, the plateau of Illy 


THE DOWNFALL. 


391 

cumbered still with dead, the accursed country round about 
Sedan that had been the scene of such dire disaster ; and rest- 
ing on the ground in that cool, damp corner of a wood, his 
head pillowed on a root, he again yielded to the feeling of de- 
spair that had overwhelmed him the day before while lying on 
Delaherche’s sofa. And that which, intensifying the suffering 
of his wounded pride, now harassed and tortured him, was the 
question of the morrow, the feverish longing to know how 
deep had been their fall, how great the wreck and ruin sustained 
by their world of yesterday. The Emperor had surrendered his 
sword to King William ; was not, therefore, the abominable 
war ended ? But he recalled the remark he had heard made 
by two of the Bavarians of the guard who had escorted the 
prisoners to Iges ; “ We’re all in France, we’re all bound for 
Paris ! ” In his semi-somnolent, dreamy state the vision of what 
was to be suddenly rose before his eyes : the empire over- 
turned and swept away amid a howl of universal execration, 
the republic proclaimed with an outburst of patriotic fervor, 
while the legend of ’92 would incite men to emulate the 
glorious past, and, flocking to the standards, drive from the 
country’s soil the hated foreigner with armies of brave volun- 
teers. He reflected confusedly upon all the aspects of the case, 
and speculations followed one another in swift succession 
through his poor wearied brain : the harsh terms imposed by 
the victors, the bitterness of defeat, the determination of the 
vanquished to resist even to the last drop of blood, the fate of 
those eighty thousand men, his companions, who were to be 
captives for weeks, months, years, perhaps, first on the penin- 
sula and afterward in German fortresses. 7 'he foundations 
were giving way, and everything was going down, down to the 
bottomless depths of perdition. 

The call of the sentinels, now loud, now low, seemed to 
sound more faintly in his ears and to be receding in the 
distance, when suddenly, as he turned on his hard couch, a 
shot rent the deep silence. A hollow groan rose on the calm 
air of night, there was a splashing in the water, the brief strug- 
gle of one who sinks to rise no more. It was some poor wretch 
who had attempted to escape by swimming the Meuse and had 
received a bullet in his brain. 

The next morning Maurice was up and stirring with the sun. 
The sky was cloudless ; he was desirous to rejoin Jean and his 
other comrades of the company with the least possible delay. 
Ji'or ^ moment ho had an idea of going to see what there was 


392 


THE DOWNFALL. 


in the interior of the peninsula, then resolved he would 
first complete its circuit. And on reaching the canal his eyes 
were greeted with the sight of the io6th — or rather what was 
left of it — a thousand men, encamped along the river bank among 
some waste lands, with no protection save a row of slender pop- 
lars. If he had only turned to the left the night before 
instead of pursuing a straight course he could have been with his 
regiment at once. And he noticed that almost all the line regi- 
ments were collected along that part of the bank that extends 
from the Tour a Glaire to the Chateau of Villette — another 
bourgeois country place, situated more in the direction of Don- 
chery and surrounded by a few hovels — all of them having 
selected their bivouac near the bridge, sole issue from their 
prison, as sheep will instinctively huddle together close to the 
door of their fold, knowing that sooner or later it will be opened 
for them. 

Jean uttered a cry of pleasure. “Ah, so it’s you, at last ! 
I had begun to think you were in the river.” 

He was there with what remained of the squad, Pache and 
Lapoulle, Loubet and Chouteau. The last named had slept 
under doorways in Sedan until the attention of the Prus- 
sian provost guard had finally restored them to their regi- 
ment. The corporal, moreover, was the only surviving officer 
of the company, death having taken away Sergeant Sapin, Lieu- 
tenant Rochas and Captain Beaudoin, and although the victors 
had abolished distinction of rank among the prisoners, deciding 
that obedience was due to the German officers alone, the four 
men had, nevertheless, rallied to him, knowing him to be a leader 
of prudence and experience, upon whom they could rely in cir- 
cumstances of difficulty. Thus it was that peace and harmony 
reigned among them that morning, notwithstanding the stupid- 
ity of some and the evil designs of others. In the first place, 
the night before he had found them a place to sleep in that was 
comparatively dry, where they had stretched themselves on the 
ground, the only thing they had left in the way of protection 
from the weather being the half of a shelter-tent. After 
that he had managed to secure some wood and a kettle, in 
which Loubet made coffee for them, the comforting warmth 
of which had fortified their stomachs. The rain had ceased, 
the day gave promise of being bright and warm, they had 
a small supply of biscuit and bacon left, and then, as Chou- 
teau said, it was a comfort to have no orders to obey, to have 
their fill of loafing. They were prisoners, it was true, but there 


THE DOWNFALL. 


393 


was plenty of room to move about. Moreover, they would be 
away from there in two or three days. Under these circum- 
stances the day, which was Sunday, the 4th, passed pleasantly 
enough. 

Maurice, whose courage had returned to him now that he 
was with the comrades once more, found nothing to annoy him 
except the Prussian bands, which played all the afternoon 
beyond the canal. Toward evening there was vocal music, and 
the men sang in chorus. They could be seen outside the chain 
of sentries, walking to and fro in little groups and singing 
solemn melodies in a loud, ringing voice in honor of the Sab- 
bath. 

“ Confound those bands ! ” Maurice at last impatiently 
exclaimed. “ They will drive me wild ! ” 

Jean, whose nerves were less susceptible, shrugged his 
shoulders. 

Dame ! they have reason to feel good ; and then perhaps 
they think it affords us pleasure. It hasn’t been siich a bad 
day ; don’t let’s find fault.” 

As night approached, however, the rain began to fall again. 
Some of the men had taken possession of what few unoccupied 
houses there were on the peninsula, others were provided with 
tents that they erected, but by far the greater number, without 
shelter of any sort, destitute of blankets even, were compelled 
to pass the night in the open air, exposed to the pouring rain. 

About one o’clock Maurice, who had been sleeping soundly 
ns a result of his fatigue, awoke and found himself in the 
middle of a miniature lake. The trenches, swollen by the 
heavy downpour, had overflowed and inundated the ground 
where he lay. Chouteau’s and Loubet’s wrath vented itself in 
a volley of maledictions, while Pache shook Lapoulle, who, 
unmindful of his ducking, slept, through it all as if he was 
never to wake again. Then Jean, remembering the’ row of 
poplars on the bank of the canal, collected his little band and 
ran thither for shelter ; and there they passed the remainder 
of that wretched night, crouching with their back to the trees, 
their legs doubled under them, so as to expose as little of their 
person as might be to the big drops. 

The next day, and the day succeeding it, the weather was 
truly detestable, what with the continual showers, that came 
down so copiously and at such frequent intervals that the 
men’s clothing had not time to dry on their backs. They were 
threatened with famine, too ; there was not a biscuit left in 


394 


THE DOWNFALL. 


camp, and the coffee and bacon were exhausted. During 
those two days, Monday and Tuesday, they existed on potatoes 
that they dug in the adjacent fields, and even those vegetables 
had become so scarce toward the end of the second day that 
those soldiers who had money paid as high as five sous apiece 
for them. It was true that the bugles sounded the call for 
“ distribution ; the corporal had nearly run his legs off try- 
ing to be the first to reach a great shed near the Tour a Glaire, 
where it was reported that rations of bread were to be issued, 
but on the occasion of a first visit he had waited there three 
hours and gone away empty-handed, and on ^ second had 
become involved in a quarrel with a Bavarian. It was well 
known that the French officers were themselves in deep dis- 
tress and powerless to assist their men ; had the German staff 
driven the vanquished army out there in the mud and rain with 
the intention of letting them starve to death ? Not the first 
step seemed to have been taken, not an effort had been made, 
to provide for the subsistence of those eighty thousand men in 
that hell on earth that the soldiers subsequently christened 
Camp Misery, a name that the bravest of them could aever 
hear mentioned in later days without a shudder. 

On his return from his wearisome and fruitless expedition 
to the shed, Jean forgot his usual placidity and gave way to 
anger. 

“ What do they mean by calling us up when there’s nothing 
for us ? I’ll be hanged if I’ll put myself out for them another 
time ! ” 

And yet, whenever there was a call, he hurried off again. 
It was inhuman to sound the bugles thus, merely because 
regulations prescribed certain calls at certain hours, and it had 
another effect that was near breaking Maurice’s heart. Every 
time that the trumpets sounded the French horses, that were 
runnin-g free on the other side of the canal, came rushing u]) 
and dashed into the water to rejoin their squadron, as excited 
at the well-known sound as they would be at the touch of the 
spur ; but in their exhausted condition they were swept away 
by the current and few attained the shore. It was a cruel 
sight to see their struggles ; they were drowned in great num- 
bers, and their bodies, decomposing and swelling in the hot 
sunshine, drifted on the bosom of the canal. As for those of 
them that got to land, they seemed as if stricken with sudden 
madness, galloping wildly off and hiding among the wastq 
places of the peninsula, 


THE DOWNFALL. 


395 


“ More bones for the crows to pick ! ” sorrowfully said 
Maurice, remembering the great droves of horses that he had 
encountered on a previous occasion. “ If we remain here 
a few days we shall all be devouring one another. Poor 
brutes ! ” 

The night between Tuesday and Wednesday was most terri- 
ble of all, and Jean, who was beginning to feel seriously 
alarmed for Maurice’s feverish state, made him wrap himself 
in an old blanket that they had purchased from a zouave for 
ten francs, while he, with no protection save his water-soaked 
capote, cheerfully took the drenching of the deluge which that 
night pelted down without cessation. Their position under 
the poplars had become untenable ; it was a streaming river 
of mud, the water rested in deep puddles on the surface of the 
saturated ground. What was worst of all was that they had to 
suffer on an empty stomach, the evening meal of the six men 
having consisted of two beets which they had been compelled 
to eat raw, having no dry wood to make a fire with, and the 
sweet taste and refreshing coolness of the vegetables had 
quickly been succeeded by an intolerable burning sensation. 
Some cases of dysentery had appeared among the men, caused 
by fatigue, improper food and the persistent humidity of the 
atmosphere. More than ten times that night did Jean stretch 
forth his hand to see that Maurice had not uncovered himself 
in the movements of his slumber, and thus he kept watch and 
ward over his friend — his back supported by the same tree- 
trunk, his legs in a pool of water — with tenderness unspeakable. 
Since the day that on the plateau of Illy his comrade had 
carried him off in his arms and saved him from the Prussians 
he had repaid the debt a hundred-fold. He stopped not to 
reason on it ; it was the free gift of all his being, the total 
forgetfulness of self for love of the other, the finest, most 
delicate, grandest exhibition of friendship possible, and that, 
too, in a peasant, whose lot had always been the lowly one of 
a tiller of the soil and who had never risen far above the earth, 
who could not find words to express what he felt, acting purely 
from instinct, in all simplicity of soul. Many a time already 
he had taken the food from his mouth, as the men of the squad 
were wont to say ; now he would have divested himself of his 
skin if with it he might have endued ^he other, to protect his 
shoulders, to warm his feet. And in the midst of the savage 
egotism that surrounded them, among that aggregation of 
buffering humanity whobe worst appetites were inflanied and 


396 


THE DOWNFALL, 


intensified by hunger, he perhaps owed it to his complete ab- 
negation of self that he had preserved thus far his tranquillity 
of mind and his vigorous health, for he among them all, his 
great strength unimpaired, alone maintained his composure and 
something like a level head. 

After that distressful night Jean determined to carry into 
execution a plan that he had been reflecting over since the 
day previous. 

“ See here, little one, we can get nothing to eat, and every- 
one seems to have forgotten us here in this beastly hole ; now 
unless we want to die the death of dogs, it behooves us to stir 
about a bit. How are your legs ? ” 

The sun had come out again, fortunately, and Maurice was 
warmed and comforted. 

“ Oh, my legs are all right ! ” 

“ Then we’ll start off on an exploring expedition. We’ve 
money in our pockets, and the deuce is in it if we can’t find 
something to buy. And we won’t bother our heads about the 
others ; they don’t deserve it. Let them take care of them- 
selves.” 

The truth was that Loubet and Chouteau had disgusted him 
by their trickiness and low selfishness, stealing whatever they 
could lay hands on and never dividing with their comrades, 
while no good was to be got out of Lapoulle, the brute, and 
Pache, the sniveling devotee. 

The pair, therefore, Maurice and Jean, started out by the 
road along the Meuse which the former had traversed once 
before, on the night of his arrival. At the Tour a Glaire the 
park and dwelling-house presented a sorrowful spectacle of 
pillage and devastation, the trim lawns cut up and destroyed, 
the trees felled, the mansion dismantled. A ragged, dirty crew 
of soldiers, with hollow cheeks and eyes preternaturally bright 
from fever, had taken possession of the place and were living 
like beasts in the filthy chambers, not daring to leave their 
quarters for a moment lest someone else might come along and 
occupy them. A little further on they passed the cavalry 
and artillery, encamped on the hillsides, once so conspicuous 
by reason of the neatness and jauntiness of their appearance, 
now run to seed like all the rest, their organization gone, de- 
moralized by that terrible, torturing hunger that drove the 
horses wild and sent the men straggling through the fields in 
plundering bands. Below them, to the right, they beheld an 
apparently interminable line of artillerymen and chasseurs 


THE DOWNFALL. 


397 


d’Afrique defiling slowly before the mill ; the miller was selling 
them flour, measuring out two handfuls into their handker- 
chiefs for a franc. The prospect of the long wait that lay be- 
fore them, should they take their place at the end of the line, 
determined them to pass on, in the hope that some better 
opportunity would present itself at the village of Iges; but 
great was their consternation when they reached it to find the 
little place as bare and empty as an Algerian village through 
wl^ich has passed a swarm of locusts ; not a crumb, not a 
fragment of anything eatable, neither bread, nor meat, nor 
vegetables, the wretched inhabitants utterly destitute. General 
Lebrun was said to be there, closeted with the mayor. He had 
been endeavoring, ineffectually, to arrange for an issue of 
bonds, redeemable at the close of the war, in order to facilitate 
the victualing of the troops. Money had ceased to have any 
value when there was nothing that it could purchase. The 
day before two francs had been paid for a biscuit, seven 
francs for a bottle of wine, a small glass of brandy was twenty 
sous, a pipeful of tobacco ten sous. And now officers, sword 
in hand, had to stand guard before the general’s house and 
the neighboring hovels, for bands of marauders were constantly 
passing, breaking down doors and stealing even the oil from 
the lamps and drinking it. 

Three zouaves invited Maurice and Jean to join them. 
Five would do the work more effectually than three. 

“ Come along. There are horses dying in plenty, and if we 
can but get some dry wood ” 

Then they fell to work on the miserable cabin of a poor 
peasant, smashing the closet doors, tearing the thatch from the 
roof. Some officers, who came up on a run, threatened them 
with their revolvers and put them to flight. 

Jean, who saw that the few villagers who had remained at 
Iges were no better off than the soldiers, perceived he had 
made a mistake in passing the mill without buying some flour. 

‘‘ There may be some left ; we had best go back.” 

But Maurice was so reduced from inanition and was beginning 
to suffer so from fatigue that he left him behind in a sheltered 
nook among the quarries, seated on a fragment of rock, his face 
turned upon the wide horizon of Sedan. He, after waiting in 
line for two long hours, finally returned with some flour wrapped 
in a piece of rag. And they ate it uncooked, dipping it up in 
their hands, unable to devise any other way. It was not so 
very bad ; it had no particular flavor, only the insipid taste of 


398 


THE DOWNFALL. 


dough. Their breakfast, such as it was, did them some good, : 
however. They were even so fortunate as to discover a little ‘ 
pool of rain-water, comparatively pure, in a hollow of a rock, at ^ 
which they quenched their thirst with great satisfaction. 

But when Jean proposed that they should spend the re- ; 
mainder of the afternoon there, Maurice negatived the motion 
with a great display of violence. 

“ No, no ; not here ! I should be ill if I were to have that 

scene before my eyes for any length of time ” With a hand - 

that trembled he pointed to the remote horizon, the hill of 
Hattoy, the plateaux of Floing and Illy, the wood of la Garenne, ^ 
those abhorred, detested fields of slaughter and defeat. 

“ While you were away just now I was obliged to turn > 
my back on it, else I should have broke out and howled i 
with rage. Yes, I should have howled like a dog tormented 
by boys — you can’t imagine how it hurts me ; it drives me 
crazy ! ” 

Jean looked at him in surprise ; he could not understand 
that pride, sensitive as a raw sore, that made defeat so bitter to 
him ; he was alarmed to behold in his eyes that wandering, 
flighty look that he had seen there before. He affected to 
treat the matter lightly. 

“ Good ! we’ll seek another country ; that’s easy enough to 
do.” 

Then they wandered as long as daylight lasted, wherever the 
paths they took conducted them. They visited the level por- 
tion of the peninsula in the hope of finding more potatoes 
there, but the artillerymen had obtained a plow and turned up 
the ground, and not a single potato had escaped their sharp 
eyes. They retraced their steps, and again they passed 
through throngs of listless, glassy-eyed, starving soldiers, strew- 
ing the ground with their debilitated forms, falling by hun- 
dreds in the bright sunshine from sheer exhaustion. Them- 
selves they were many times overcome by fatigue and forced 
to sit down and rest ; then their deep-seated sensation of 
suffering would bring, them to their feet again and they would 
recommence their wandering, like animals impelled by instinct 
to move on perpetually in quest of pasturage. It seemed to 
them to last for years, and yet the moments sped by rapidly. 
In the more inland region, over Donchery way, they received 
a fright from the horses and sought the protection of a wall, 
where they remained a long time, too exhausted to rise, watch- 
ing with vague, la€k-|nster eyes the wild course of the crazed 


THE DOWNFALL. 399 

beasts as they raced athwart the red western sky where the sun 
was sinking. 

As Maurice had foreseen, the thousands of horses that 
shared the captivity of the army, and for which it was impossi- 
ble to provide forage, constituted a peril that grew greater day 
by day. At first they had nibbled the vegetation and gnawed 
the bark off trees, then had attacked the fences and whatever 
wooden structures they came across, and now they seemed 
ready to devour one another. It was a frequent occurrence to 
•see one of them throw himself upon another and tear out great 
tufts froni his mane or tail, which he would grind between his 
teeth, slavering meanwhile at the mouth profusely. But it was 
at night that they became most terrible, as if they were visited 
by visions of terror in the darkness. They collected in droves, 
and, attracted by the straw, made furious rushes upon what 
few tents there were, overturning and demolishing them. It 
was to no purpose that the men built great fires to keep them 
away ; the device only served to madden them the more. 
Their shrill cries were so full of anguish, so dreadful to the 
ear, that they might have been mistaken for the howls of wild 
beasts. Were they driven away, they returned, more numerous 
and fiercer than before. Scarce a moment passed but out in 
the darkness could be heard the shriek of anguish of some 
unfortunate soldier whom the crazed beasts had crushed in 
their wild stampede. 

The sun was still above the horizon when Jean and Maurice, 
on their way back to the camp, were astonished by meeting 
with tbe four men of the squad, lurking in a ditch, apparently 
for no good purpose. Loubet hailed them at once, and Chou- 
teau constituted himself spokesman : 

“We are considering ways and means for dining this even- 
ing. We shall die if we go on this way ; it is thirty-six hours 
since we have had anything to put in our stomach — so, as 
there are horses plenty, and horse-meat isn’t such bad eat- 
ing “ 

“You’ll join us, won’t you, corporal ? ’’ said Loubet, inter- 
rupting, “ for, with such a big, strong animal to handle, the 
more of us there are the better it will be. See, there is one, 
off yonder, that we’ve been keeping an eye on for the last hour; 
that big bay that is in such a bad way. He’ll be all the easier 
to finish.’’ 

And he pointed to a horse that was dying of starvation, on 
the edge of what had once been a field of beets. He had 


400 


THE DOWNFALL. 


fallen on his flank, and every now and then would raise his 
head and look about him pleadingly, with a deep inhalation 
that sounded like a sigh. 

“ Ah, how long we have to wait ! ” grumbled Lapoulle, who 
was suffering torment from his fierce appetite. “ I’ll go and 
kill him— shall I ? ” 

But Loubet stopped him. Much obliged ! and have the 
Prussians down on them, who had given notice that death 
would be the penalty for killing a horse, fearing that the car- 
cass would breed a pestilence. They must wait until it was* 
dark. And that was the reason why the four men were lurking 
in the ditch, waiting, with glistening, hungry eyes fixed on the 
dying brute. 

“ Corporal,” asked Pache, in a voice that faltered a little, 
“ you have lots of ideas in your head ; couldn’t you kill him 
painlessly ?” 

Jean refused the cruel task with a gesture of disgust. What, 
kill that poor beast that was even then in its death agony ! oh, 
no, no ! His first impulse had been to fly and take Maurice 
with him, that neither of them might be concerned in the re- 
volting butchery ; but looking at his companion and beholding 
him so pale and faint, he reproached himself for such an excess of 
sensibility. What were animals created for after all, mon Dieu., 
unless to afford sustenance to man I They could not allow 
themselves to starve when there was food within reach. And 
it rejoiced him to see Maurice cheer up a little at the prospect 
of eating ; he said in his easy, good-natured way : 

“ Faith, you’re wrong there ; I’ve no ideas in my head, and 
if he has got to be killed without pain ” 

“ Oh ! that’ s all one to me,” interrupted Lapoulle. “ I’ll 
show you.” 

The two newcomers seated themselves in the ditch and 
joined the others in their expectancy. Now and again one of the 
men would rise and make certain that the horse was still there, 
its neck outstretched to catch the cool exhalations of the Meuse 
and the last rays of the setting sun, as if bidding farewell to 
life. And when at last twilight crept slowly o’er the scene the 
six men were erect upon their feet, impatient that night was so 
tardy in its coming, casting furtive, frightened looks about 
them to see they were not observed. 

“Ah, zut!” exclaimed Chouteau, “the time is come !” 

Objects were still discernible in the fields by the uncertain, 
mysterious light “between dog and wolf,” and Lapoulle went 


THE DOWNFALL. 


401 


forward first, followed by the five others. He had taken from 
the ditch a large, rounded bowlder, and, with it in his two 
brawny hands, rushing upon the horse, commenced to batter at 
his skull as with a club. At the second blow, however, the 
horse, stung by the pain, attempted to get on his feet. Chou- 
teau and Loubet had thrown themselves across his legs and 
were endeavoring to hold him down, shouting to the others to 
help them. The poor brute’s cries were almost human in their 
accent of terror and distress ; he struggled desperately to shake 
off his assailants, and would have broken them like a reed had 
he not been half dead with inanition. The movements of his 
head prevented the blows from taking effect ; Lapoulle was 
unable to despatch him. 

“ Norn de Dieu ! how hard his bones are ! Hold him, some- 
body, until I finish him.” 

Jean and Maurice stood looking at the scene in silent horror ; 
they heard not Chouteau’s appeals for assistance ; were power- 
less to raise a hand. And Pache, in a sudden outburst of piety 
and pity, dropped on his knees, joined his hands, and began 
to mumble the prayers that are repeated at the bedside of the 
dying. 

“ Merciful God, have pity on him. Let him, good Lord, 
depart in peace ” 

Again Lapoulle struck ineffectually, with no other effect than 
to destroy an ear of the wretched creature, that threw back its 
head and gave utterance to a loud, shrill scream. 

“Hold on !” growled Chouteau ; “ this won’t do ; he’ll get 
us all in the lockup. We must end the matter. Hold him 
fast, Loubet.” 

He took from his pocket a penknife, a small affair of which 
the blade was scarcely longer than a man’s finger, and casting 
himself proneon the animal’s body and passing an arm about 
its neck, began to hack away at the live flesh, cutting away 
great morsels, until he found and severed the artery. He 
leaped quickly to one side ; the blood spirted forth in a tor- 
rent, as when the plug is removed from a fountain, while the 
feet stirred feebly and convulsive movements ran along the 
skin, succeeding one another like waves of the sea. It was 
near five minutes before the horse was dead. His great eyes, 
dilated wide and filled with melancholy and affright, were fixed 
upon the wan-visaged men who stood waiting for him to die ; 
then they grew dim and the light died from out them. ^ 

“ Merciful God,” muttered Pache, still on his knees, “ keep 


402 


THE DOWNFALL. 


him in thy holy protection — succor him, Lord, and grant him 
eternal rest.” 

Afterward, when the creature’s movements had ceased, they 
were at a loss to know where the best cut lay and how they 
were to get at it. Loubet, who was something of a Jack-of-all- 
trades, showed them what was to be done in order to secure 
the loin, but as he was a tyro at the butchering business and, 
moreover, had only his small penknife to work with, he quickly 
lost his way amid the warm, quivering flesh. And Lapoulle, 
in his impatience, having attempted to be of assistance by 
making an incision in the belly, for which there was no neces- 
sity whatever, the scene of bloodshed became truly sickening. 
They wallowed in the gore and entrails that covered the ground 
about them, like a pack of ravening wolves collected around 
the carcass of their prey, fleshing their keen fangs in it. 

“ I don’t know what cut that may be,” Loubet said at last, 
rising to his feet with a huge lump of meat in his hands, “ but 
by the time we’ve eaten it, I don’t believe any of us will be 
hungry.” 

Jean and Maurice had averted their eyes in horror from the 
disgusting spectacle ; still, however, the pangs of hunger were 
gnawing at their vitals, and when the band slunk rapidly away, 
so as not to be causht in the vicinity of the incriminating 
carcass, they followed it. Chouteau had discovered three large 
beets, that had somehow been overlooked by previous visitors 
to the field, and carried them off with him. Loubet had loaded 
the meat on Lapoulle’s shoulders so as to have his own arms 
free, while Pache carried the kettle that belonged to the squad, 
which they had brought with them on the chance of finding 
something to cook in it. And the six men ran as if their lives 
were at stake, never stopping to take breath, as if they heard 
the pursuers at their heels. 

. Suddenly Loubet brought the others to a halt. 

“ It’s idiotic to run like this ; let’s decide where we’shall go 
to cook the stuff.” 

Jean, who was beginning to recover his self-possession, pro- 
posed the quarries. They were only three hundred yards dis- 
tant, and in them were secret recesses in abundance where they 
could kindle a fire without being seen. When they reached 
the spot, however, difficulties of every description presented 
themselves. First, there was the question of wood; fortunately 
a laborer, who had been repairing the road, had gone home and 
left his wheelbarrow behind him ; Lapoulle quickly reduced it 


THE DOWNFALL, 


403 


to fragments with the heel of his boot. Then there was no 
water to be had that was fit to drink ; the hot sunshine had 
dried up all the pools of rain-water. True there was a pump at 
the Tour a Glaire, but that was too far away, and besides it 
was never accessible before midnight ; the men forming in long 
lines with their bowls and porringers, only too happy when, 
after waiting for hours, they could escape from the jam with 
their supply of the precious fluid unspilled. As for the few 
wells in the neighborhood, they had been dry for the last two 
days, and the bucket brought up nothing save mud and slime. 
Their sole resource appeared to be the water of tlie Meuse, 
which was parted from them by the road. 

“ I’ll take the kettle and go and fill it,” said Jean. 

The others objected. 

“ No, no ! We don’t want to be poisoned ; it is full of dead 
bodies ! ” 

They spoke the truth. The Meuse was constantly bringing 
down corpses of men and horses ; they could be seen floating 
with the current at any moment of the day, swollen and of a 
greenish hue, in the early stages of decomposition. Often they 
were caught in the weeds and bushes on the bank, where they 
remained to poison the atmosphere, swinging to the tide with a 
gentle, tremulous motion that imparted to them a semblance of 
life. Nearly every soldier who had drunk that abominable 
water had suffered from nausea and colic, often succeeded 
afterward by dysentery. It seemed as if they must make up 
their mind to use it, however, as there was no other ; Maurice 
explained that there would be no danger in drinking it after it 
was boiled. 

“ Very well, then ; I’ll go,” said Jean. And he’ started, tak- 
ing Lapoulle with him to carry the kettle. 

By the time they got the kettle filled and on the fire it was 
quite dark. Loubet had peeled the beets and thrown them into 
the water to cook — a feast fit for the gods, he declared it would 
be — and fed the fire with fragments of the wheelbarrow, for they 
were all suffering so from hunger that they could have eaten 
tlie meat before the pot began to boil. Their huge shadows 
danced fantastically in the firelight on the rocky walls of the 
quarry. Then they found it impossible longer to restrain their 
appetite, and threw themselves upon the unclean mess, tearing 
the flesh with eager, trembling fingers and dividing it among 
them, too impatient even to make use of the knife. But, fam- 
ishing as they were, their stomachs revolted ; they felt the want 


404 


THE DOWNFALL. 


of salt, they could not swallow that tasteless, sickening broth, 
tliose chunks of half-cooked, viscid meat that had a taste like 
clay. Some among them had a fit of vomiting. Pache was 
very ill. Chouteau and Loubet heaped maledictions on that 
infernal old nag, that had caused them such trouble to get him 
to the pot and then given them the colic. Lapoulle was the 
only one among them who ate abundantly, but he was in a very 
bad way that night when, with his three comrades, he returned 
to their resting-place under the poplars by the canal. 

On their way back to camp Maurice, without uttering a word, 
took advantage of the darkness to seize Jean by the arm and 
drag him into a by-path. Their comrades inspired him with 
unconquerable disgust ; he thought he should like to go and 
sleep in the little wood where he had spent his first night on 
the peninsula. It was a good idea, and Jean commended it 
highly when he had laid himself down on the warm, dry 
ground, under the shelter of the dense foliage. They remained 
there until the sun was high in the heavens, and enjoyed a 
sound, refreshing slumber, which restored to them something of 
their strength. 

The following day was Thursday, but they had ceased to 
note the days ; they were simply glad to observe that the 
weather seemed to be coming off fine again. Jean overcame 
Maurice's repugnance and prevailed on him to return to the 
canal, to see if their regiment was not to move that day. Not 
a day passed now but detachments of prisoners, a thousand to 
twelve hundred strong, were sent off to the fortresses in Ger- 
many. The day but one before they had seen, drawn up in 
front of the Prussian headquarters, a column of officers of 
various grades, who were going to Pont-a-Mousson, there to 
take the railway. Everyone was possessed with a wild, fever- 
ish longing to get away from that camp where they had seen 
such suffering. Ah ! if it but might be their turn ! And 
when they found the io6th still encamped on the bank of the 
canal, in the inevitable disorder consequent upon such distress, 
their courage failed them and they despaired. 

Jean and Maurice that day thought they saw a prospect of 
obtaining something to eat. All the morning a lively traffic 
had been going on between the prisoners and the Bavarians on 
the other side of the canal ; the former would wrap their money 
in a handkerchief and toss it across to the opposite shore, the 
latter would return the handkerchief with a loaf of coarse 
brown bread, or a plug of their common, damp tobacco. Even 


THE DOWNFALL. 


405 


soldiers who had no money were not debarred from participat- 
ing in this commerce, employing, instead of currency, their 
white uniform gloves, for which the Germans appeared to have 
a weakness. For two hours packages were flying across the 
canal in its entire length under this primitive system of ex- 
changes. But when Maurice dispatched his cravat with a five- 
franc piece tied in it to the other bank, the Bavarian who was 
to return him a loaf of bread gave it, whether from awkward- 
ness or malice, such an ineffectual toss that it fell in the water. 
The incident elicited shouts of laughter from the Germans. 
Twice again Maurice repeated the experiment, and twice his 
loaf went to feed the fishes. At last the Prussian officers, at- 
tracted by the uproar, came running up and prohibited their 
men from selling anything to the prisoners, threatening them 
with dire penalties and punishments in case of disobedience. 
The traffic came to a sudden end, and Jean had hard work to 
pacify Maurice, who shook his fists at the scamps, shouting to 
them to give him back his five-franc pieces. 

This was another terrible day, notwithstanding the warm, 
bright sunshine. Twice the bugle sounded and sent Jean 
hurrying off to the shed whence rations were supposed to be is- 
sued, but on each occasion he only got his toes trod on and his 
ribs racked in the crush. The Prussians, whose organization 
was so wonderfully complete, continued to manifest the same 
brutal inattention to the necessities of the vanquished army. 
On the representations of Generals Douay and Lebrun, they had 
indeed sent in a few sheep as well as some wagon-loads of 
bread, but so little care was taken to guard them that the sheep 
were carried off bodily and the wagons pillaged as soon as they 
reached the bridge, the consequence of which was that the 
troops who were encamped a hundred yards further on were no 
better off than before ; it was only the worst element, the 
plunderers and bummers, who benefited by the provision trains. 
And thereon Jean, who, as he said, saw how the trick was done, 
brought Maurice with him to the bridge to keep an eye on the 
victuals. 

It was four o’clock, and they had not had a morsel to eat all 
that beautiful bright Thursday, when suddenly their eyes were 
gladdened by the sight of Delaherche. A few among the citizens 
of Sedan had with infinite difficulty obtained permission to 
visit the prisoners, to whom they carried provisions, and Mau- 
rice had on several occasions expressed his surprise at his 
failure to receive any tidings of his sister. As soon as they re- 


40(5 


THE DOWNFALL, 


cognized Delaherche in the distance, carrying a large basket 
and with a loaf of bread under either arm, they darted forward 
fast as their legs could carry them, but even thus they were too 
late ; a crowding, jostling mob closed in, and in the confusion 
the dazed manufacturer was relieved of his basket and one of 
his loaves, which vanished from his sight so expeditiously that 
he was never able to tell the manner of their disappearance. 

“ Ah, my poor friends ! ” he stammered, utterly crestfallen 
in his bewilderment and stupefaction, he who but a moment be- 
fore had come through the gate with a smile on his lips and an 
air of good-fellowship, magnanimously forgetting his superior 
advantages in his desire for popularity. 

Jean had taken possession of the remaining loaf and saved it 
from the hungry crew, and while he and Maurice, seated by 
the roadside, were making great inroads in it, Delaherche 
opened his budget of news for their benefit. His wife, the Lord 
be praised ! was very well, but he was greatly alarmed for the 
colonel, who had sunk into a condition of deep prostration, 
although his mother continued to bear him company from 
morning until night. 

“And my sister ? “ Maurice inquired. 

“Ah, yes ! your sister ; true. She insisted on coming with 
me ; it was she who brought the two loaves of bread. She had 
to remain over yonder, though, on the other side of the canal ; 
the sentries wouldn’t let her pass the gate. You know the 
Prussians have strictly prohibited the presence of women in the 
peninsula.” 

Then he spoke of Henriette, and of her fruitless attempts to 
see her brother and come to his assistance. Once in Sedan 
chance had brought her face to face with Cousin Gunther, the 
man who was captain in the Prussian Guards. He had passed 
her with his haughty, supercilious air, pretending not to recog- 
nize her. She, also, with a sensation of loathing, as if she were 
in the presence of one of her husband’s murderers, had hurried 
on with quickened steps ; then, with a sudden change of pur- 
pose for which she could not account, had turned back 
and told him all the manner of Weiss’s death, in harsh accents 
of reproach. And he, thus learning how horribly a relative 
had met his fate, had taken the matter coolly ; it was the for- 
tune of war ; the same thing might have happened to himself. 
His face, rendered stoically impassive by the discipline of the 
soldier, had barely betrayed the faintest evidence of interest. 
After that, when she informed him that her brother was a 


THE DOWNFALL. 


407 


prisoner and besought him to use his influence to obtain for 
her an opportunity of seeing him, he had excused himself on 
the ground that he was powerless in the matter ; the instruc- 
tions were explicit and might not be disobeyed. He appeared 
to place the regimental orderly book on a par with the Bible. 
She left him with the clearly defined impression that he 
believed he was in the country for the sole purpose of sitting 
in judgment on the French people, with all the intolerance and 
arrogance of the hereditary enemy, swollen by his personal 
hatred for the nation whom it had devolved on him to chas- 
tise. 

“ And now,” said Delaherche in conclusion, “you won’t have 
to go to bed supperless to-night ; you have had a little some- 
thing to eat. The worst is that I am afraid I shall not be able 
to secure another pass.” 

He asked them if there was anything he could do for them 
outside, and obligingly consented to take charge of some 
pencil-written letters confided to him by other soldiers, for the 
Bavarians had more than once been seen to laugh as they 
lighted their pipes with missives which they had promised to for- 
ward. Then, when Jean and Maurice had accompanied him 
to the gate, he exclaimed : 

“Look ! over yonder, there’s Henriette ! Don’t you see her 
waving her handkerchief ?” 

True enough, among the crowd beyond the line of sentinels 
they distinguished a little, thin, pale face, a white dot that 
trembled in the sunshine. Both were deeply affected, and, 
with moist eyes, raising their hands above their head, answered 
her salutation by waving them frantically in the air. 

The following day was Friday, and it was then that Maurice 
felt that his cup of horror was full to overflowing. After an- 
other night of tranquil slumber in the little wood he was so 
fortunate as to secure another meal, Jean having come across 
an old woman at the Chateau of Villette who was selling bread 
at ten francs the pound. But that day they witnessed a spec- 
tacle of which the horror remained imprinted on their minds 
for many weeks and months. 

The day before Chouteau had noticed that Pache had ceased 
complaining and was going about with a careless, satisfied air, 
as a man might do who had dined well. He immediately 
jumped at the conclusion that the sly fox must have a con- 
cealed treasure somewhere, the more so that he had seen him 
absent himself for near an hour that morning and come back 


THE DOWNFALL. 


408 

with a smile lurking on his face and his mouth filled with un* 
swallowed food. It must be that he had had a windfall, had 
probably joined some marauding party and laid in a stock of 
provisions. And Chouteau labored with Loubet and Lapoulle 
to stir up bad feeling against the comrade, with the latter more 
particularly. Hein I wasn’t he a dirty dog, if he had something 
to eat, not to go'snacks with the comrades ! He ought to have 
a lesson that he would remember, for his selfishness. 

“ To-night we’ll keep a watch on him, don’t you see. We’ll 
learn whether he dares to stuff hii7iself on the sly, when so many 
poor devils are starving all around him.” 

“ Yes, yes, that’s the talk ! we’ll follow him,” Lapoulle 
angrily declared. ‘‘ We’ll see about it ! ” 

Pie doubled his fists ; he was like a crazy man whenever the 
subject of eating was mentioned in his presence. His enor- 
mous appetite caused him to suffer more than the others ; his 
torment at times was such that he had been known to stuff his 
mouth with grass. For more than thirty-six hours, since the 
night when they had supped on horseflesh and he had con- 
tracted a terrible dysentery in consequence, he had been 
without food, for he was so little able to look out for himself 
that, notwithstanding his bovine strength, whenever he joined 
the others in a marauding raid he never got his share of the 
booty. He would have been willing to give his blood for a 
pound of bread. 

As it was beginning to be dark Pache stealthily made his 
way to the Tour a Glaire and slipped into the park, while the 
three others cautiously followed him at a distance. 

“ It won’t do to let him suspect anything,” said Chouteau. 
‘‘ Be on your guard in case he should look around.” 

But when he had advanced another hundred paces Pache 
evidently had no idea there was anyone near, for he began to 
hurry forward at a swift gait, not so much as casting a look 
behind. They had no difficulty in tracking him to the adjacent 
quarries, where they fell on him as he was in the act of remov- 
ing two great flat stones, to take from the cavity beneath part 
of a loaf of bread. It was the last of his store ; he had enough 
left for one more meal. 

“You dirty, sniveling priest’s whelp ! ” roared Lapoulle, “ so 
that is why you sneak away from us ! Give me that ; it’s my 
share ! ” 

Why should he give his bread ? Weak and puny as he was, 
his slight form dilated with anger, while he clutched the loaf 


THE DOWNFALL. 409 

against his bosom with all the strength he could master. For 
he also was hungry. 

“ Let me alone. It’s mine.” 

Then, at sight of Lapoulle’s raised fist, he broke away and 
ran, sliding down the steep banks of the quarries, making his 
way across the bare fields in the direction of Donchery, the 
three others after him in hot pursuit. He gained on them, 
however, being lighter than they, and possessed by such over- 
mastering fear, so determined to hold on to what was his 
property, that his speed seemed to rival the wind. He had 
already covered more than half a mile and was approaching 
the little wood on the margin of the stream when he en- 
countered Jean and Maurice, who were on their way back to 
their resting-place for the night. He addressed them an ap- 
pealing, distressful cry as he passed; while they, astounded by 
the wild hunt that went fleeting by, stood motionless at the 
edge of a field, and thus it was that they beheld the ensuing 
tragedy. 

As luck would have it, Pache tripped over a stone and fell. 
In an instant the others were on top of him — shouting, swear- 
ing, their passion roused to such a pitch of frenzy that they 
were like wolves that had run down their prey. 

“ Give me that,” yelled Lapoulle, “ or by G — d I’ll kill 
you ! ” 

And he had raised his fist again when Chouteau, taking from 
his pocket the penknife with which he had slaughtered the 
horse and opening it, placed it in his hand. 

“ Here, take it ! the knife ! ” 

But Jean meantime had come hurrying up, desirous to pre- 
vent the mischief he saw brewing, losing his wits like the rest 
of them, indiscreetly speaking of putting them all in the guard- 
house ; whereon Loubet, with an ugly laugh, told him he must 
be a Prussian, since they had no longer any commanders, and 
the Prussians were the only ones who issued orders. 

“ Nom de Dieu ! ” Lapoulle repeated, “ will you give me 
that?” 

Despite the terror that blanched his cheeks Pache hugged 
the bread more closely to his bosom, with the obstinacy of 
the peasant who never cedes a jot or tittle of that which is his. 

“ No ! ” 

Then in a second all was over ; the brute drove the knife 
into the other’s throat with such violence that the wretched 
man did not even utter a cry. His arms relaxed, the bread 


410 


THE DOWNFALL, 


fell to the ground, into the pool of blood that had spirted from 
the wound. 

At sight of the imbecile, uncalled-for murder, Maurice, who 
had until then been a silent spectator of the scene, appeared as 
if stricken by a sudden fit of madness. He raved and gesticu- 
lated, shaking his fist in the face of the three men and calling 
them murderers, assassins, with a violence that shook his frame 
from head to foot. But Lapoulle seemed not even to hear him. 
Squatted on the ground beside the corpse, he was devouring 
the bloodstained bread, an expression of stupid ferocity on 
his face, with a loud grinding of his great jaws, while Chouteau 
and Loubet, seeing him thus terrible in the gratification of his 
wild-beast appetite, did not even dare claim their portion. 

By this time night had fallen, a pleasant night with a clear 
sky thick-set with stars, and Maurice and Jean, who had re- 
gained the shelter of their little wood, presently perceived 
Lapoulle wandering up and down the river bank. The two 
others had vanished, had doubtless returned to the encamp- 
ment by the canal, their mind troubled by reason of the corpse 
they left behind them. He, on the other hand, seemed to 
dread going to rejoin the comrades. When he was more him- 
self and his brutish, sluggish intellect showed him the full ex- 
tent of his crime, he had evidently experienced a twinge of 
anguish that made motion a necessity, and not daring to return 
to the interior of the peninsula, where he would have to face 
the body of his victim, had sought the bank of the stream, 
where he was now tramping to and fro with u-neven, faltering 
steps. What was going on within the recesses of that dark- 
ened mind that guided the actions of that creature, so de- 
graded as to be scarce higher than the animal ? Was it the 
awakening of remorse ? or only the fear lest his crime might be 
discovered ? He could not remain there ; he paced his beat 
as a wild beast shambles up and down its cage, with a sudden 
and ever-increasing longing to fly, a longing that ached and 
pained like a physical hurt, from which he felt he should die, 
could he do nothing to satisfy it. Quick, quick, he must fly, must 
fly at once, from that prison where he had slain a fellow-being. 
And yet, the coward in him, it may be, gaining the supremacy, 
he threw himself on the ground, and for a long time lay crouched 
among the herbage. 

And Maurice said to Jean in his horror and disgust : 

“ See here, I cannot remain longer in this place ; I tell you 
plainly I should go mad. I am surprised that the physical 


THE DOWNFALL. 


411 

part of me holds out as it does ; my bodily health is not so bad, 
but the mind is going ; yes ! it is going, I am certain of it. If 
you leave me another^day in this hell I am lost. I beg you, let 
us go away, let us start at once ! ” 

And he went on to propound the wildest schemes for getting 
away. They would swim the Meuse, would cast themselves on 
the sentries and strangle them with a cord he had in his pocket, 
or would beat out their brains with rocks, or would buy them 
over with the money they had left and don their uniform to 
pass through the Prussian lines. 

“ My dear boy, be silent ! ” Jean sadly answered ; “ it 
frightens me to hear you talk so wildly. Is there any reason 
in what you say, are any of your plans feasible ? Wait ; to- 
morrow we’ll see about it. Be silent ! ” 

He, although his heart, no less than his friend’s, was wrung 
by the horrors that surrounded them on every side, had pre- 
served his mental balance amid the debilitating effects of fam- 
ine, among the grisly visions of that existence than which 
none could approach more nearly the depth of human misery. 
And as his companion’s frenzy continued to increase and he 
talked of casting himself into the Meuse, he was obliged to re- 
strain him, even to the point of using violence, scolding and 
supplicating, tears standing in his eyes. Then suddenly he said : 
“ See ! look there ! ” 

A splash was heard coming from the river, and they saw it 
was Lapoulle, who had finally decided to attempt to escape by 
the stream, first removing his capote in order that it might not 
hinder his movements ; and his white shirt made a spot of 
brightness that was distinctly visible upon the dusky bosom 
of the moving water. He was swimming up-stream with a 
leisurely movement, doubtless on the lookout for a place where 
he might land with safety, while on the opposite shore there 
was no difficulty in discerning the shadowy forms of the sen- 
tries, erect and motionless in the semi-obscurity. There came 
a sudden flash that tore the black veil of night, a report that 
went with bellowing echoes and spent itself among the rocks 
of Montimont. The water boiled and bubbled for an instant, 
as it does under the wild efforts of an unpracticed oarsman. 
And that was all ; Lapoulle’s body, the white spot on the 
dusky stream, floated away, lifeless, upon the tide. 

The next day, which was Saturday, Jean aroused Maurice as 
soon as it was day and they returned to the camp of the io6th, 
with the hope that they might move that day, but there were 


412 


THE DOWNFALL. 


no orders ; it seemed as though the regiment’s existence were 
forgotten. Many of the troops had been sent away, the penin- 
sula was being depopulated, and sickness was terribly preva- 
lent among those who were left behind. For eight long days 
disease had been germinating in that hell on earth ; the rains 
had ceased, but the blazing, scorching sunlight had only 
wrought a change of evils. The excessive heat completed the 
exhaustion of the men and gave to the numerous cases of dys- 
entery an alarmingly epidemic character. The excreta of that 
army of sick poisoned the air with their noxious emanations. 
No one could approach the Meuse or the canal, owing to the over- 
powering stench that rose from the bodies of drowned soldiers 
and horses that lay festering among the weeds. And the horses, 
that dropped in the fields from inanition, were decomposing so 
rapidly and forming such a fruitful source of pestilence that 
the Prussians, commencing to be alarmed on their own ac- 
count, had provided picks and shovels and forced the prisoners 
to bury them. 

That day, however, was the last on which they suffered from 
famine. As their numbers were so greatly reduced and pro- 
visions kept pouring in from every quarter, they passed at a 
single bound from the extreme of destitution to the most 
abundant plenty. Bread, meat, and wine, even, were to be had 
without stint ; eating went on from morning till night, until 
they were ready to drop. Darkness descended, and they were 
eating still ; in some quarters the gorging was continued until 
the next morning. To many it proved fatal. 

That whole day Jean made it his sole business to keep watch 
over Maurice, who he saw was ripe for some rash action. He 
had been drinking ; he spoke of his intention of cuffing a 
Prussian officer in order that he might be sent away. And at 
night Jean, having discovered an unoccupied corner in the 
cellar of one of the outbuildings at the Tour a Glaire, thought 
it advisable to go and sleep there with his companion, thinking 
that a good night’s rest would do him good, but it turned out 
to be the worst night in all their experience, a night of terror 
during which neither of them closed an eye. The cellar was 
inhabited by other soldiers ; lying in the same corner were two 
who were dying of dysentery, and as soon as it was fairly dark 
they commenced to relieve their sufferings by moans and in- 
articulate cries, a hideous death-rattle that went on uninter- 
ruptedly until morning. These sounds finally became so hor- 
rific, there in the intense darkness, that the others who were 


THE DOWNFALL, 


413 


resting there, wishing to sleep, allowed their anger to get the 
better of them and shouted to the dying men to be silent. 
They did not bear ; the rattle went on, drowning all other 
sounds, while from without came the drunken clamor of those 
who wer^ eating and drinking still, with insatiable appetite. 

Then commenced for Maurice a period of agony unspeaka- 
able. He would have fled from the awful sounds that brought 
the cold sweat of anguish in great drops to his brow, but when 
he arose and attempted to grope his way out he trod on the 
limbs of those extended there, and finally fell to the ground, 
a living man immured there in the darkness with the dying. 
He made no further effort to escape from this last trial. The 
entire frightful disaster arose before his mind, from the time of 
their departure from Rheims to the crushing defeat of Sedan. 
It seemed to him that in that night, in the inky blackness of 
that cellar, where the groans of two dying soldiers drove sleep 
from the eyelids of their comrades, the ordeal of the army of 
Chalons had reached its climax. At each of the stations of its 
passion the army of despair, the expiatory band, driven for- 
ward to the sacrifice, had spent its life-blood in atonement for 
the faults of others ; and now, unhonored amid disaster, cov- 
ered with contumely, it was enduring martyrdom in that cruel 
scourging, the severity of which it had done nothing to deserve. 
He felt it was too much ; he was heartsick with rage and grief, 
hungering for justice, burning with a fierce desire to be avenged 
on destiny. 

When daylight appeared one of the soldiers was dead, the 
other was lingering on in protracted agony. 

“ Come along, little one,” Jean gently said ; “ we’ll go and 
get a breath of fresh air ; it will do us good.” 

But when the pair emerged into the pure, warm morning air 
and, pursuing the river bank, were near the village of Iges, 
Maurice grew flightier still, and extending his hand toward the 
vast expanse of sunlit battlefield, the plateau of Illy in front of 
them, Saint-Menges to the left, the wood of la Garenne to the 
right, he cried : 

“ No, I cannot, I cannot bear to look on it ! The sight 
pierces my heart and drives me mad. Take me away, oh ! 
take me away, at once, at once ! ” 

It was Sunday once more ; the bells were pealing from the 
steeples of Sedan, while the music of a German military band 
floated on the air in the distance. There were still no orders 
for their regiment to move, and Jean, alarmed to see Maurice’s 


414 


THE DOWNFALL. 


deliriousness increasing, determined to attempt the execution 
of a plan that he had been maturing in his mind for the last 
twenty-four hours. On the road before the tents of the Prus- 
sians another regiment, the 5th of the line, was drawn up in 
readiness for departure. Great confusion prevailed in the 
column, and an officer, whose knowledge of the French lan- 
guage was imperfect, had been unable to complete the roster of 
the prisoners. Then the two friends, having first torn from 
their uniform coat the collar and buttons in order that the 
number might not betray their identity, quietly took their place 
in the ranks and soon had the satisfaction of crossing the 
bridge and leaving the chain of sentries behind them. The 
same idea must have presented itself to Loubet and Chouteau, 
for they caught sight of them somewhat further to the rear, 
peering anxiously about them with the guilty eyes of murderers. 

Ah, what comfort there was for them in that first blissful 
moment ! Outside their prison the sunlight was brighter, the 
air more bracing ; it was like a resurrection, a bright renewal 
of all their hopes. Whatever evil fortune might have in store 
for them, they dreaded it not ; they snapped their fingers at it 
in their delight at having seen the last of the horrors of Camp 
Misery. 


III. 

T hat morning Maurice and Jean listened for the last time 
to the gay, ringing notes of the French bugles, and now 
they were on their way to Pont-k-Mousson, marching in the 
ranks of the convoy of prisoners, which was guarded front and 
rear by platoons of Prussian infantry, while a file of men with 
fixed bayonets flanked the column on either side. Whenever 
they came to a German post they heard only the lugubrious, 
ear-piercing strains of the Prussian trumpets. 

Maurice was glad to observe that the column took the left- 
hand road and would pass through Sedan ; perhaps he would 
have an opportunity of seeing his sister Henriette. All the 
pleasure, however, that he had experienced at his release from 
that foul cesspool where he had spent nine days of agony was 
dashed to the ground and destroyed during the three-mile 
march from the peninsula of Iges to the city. It was but an- 
other form of his old distress to behold that array of prisoners, 
shuffling timorously through the dust of the road, like a flock 
of sheep with the dog at their heels. There is no spectacle in 


THE DOWNFALL. 


415 


all the world more pitiful than that of a column of vanquished 
troops being marched off into captivity under guard of their 
conquerors, without arms, their empty hands hanging idly at 
their sides ; and these men, clad in rags and tatters, besmeared 
with the filth in which they had lain for more than a week, 
gaunt and wasted after their long fast, were more like vaga- 
bonds than soldiers ; they resembled loathsome, horribly dirty 
tramps, whom the gendarmes would have picked up along the 
highways and consigned to the lockup. As they passed 
through the Faubourg of Torcy, where men paused on the side- 
walks and women came to their doors to regard them with 
mournful, compassionate interest, the blush of shame rose to 
Maurice’s cheek, he hung his head and a bitter taste came to 
his mouth. 

Jean, whose epidermis was thicker and mind more practical, 
thought only of their stupidity in not having brought off with 
them a loaf of bread apiece. In the hurry of their abrupt de- 
parture they had even gone off without breakfasting, and 
hunger soon made its presence felt by the nerveless sensation in 
their legs. Others among the prisoners appeared to be in the 
same boat, for they held out money, begging the people of the 
place to sell them something to eat. There was one, an ex- 
tremely tall man, apparently very ill, who displayed a gold 
piece, extending it above the heads of the soldiers of the escort ; 
and he was almost frantic that he could purchase nothing. 
Just at that time Jean, who had been keeping his eyes open, 
perceived a bakery a short distance ahead, before which were 
piled a dozen loaves of bread ; he immediately got his money 
ready and, as the column passed, tossed the baker a'^five-franc 
piece and endeavored to secure two of the loaves ; then, when 
the Prussian who was marching at his side pushed him back 
roughly into the ranks, he protested, demanding that he be 
allowed to recover his money from the baker. But at that 
juncture the captain commanding the detachment, a short, 
bald-headed man with a brutal expression of face, came hasten- 
ing up ; he raised his revolver over Jean’s head as if about to 
strike him with the butt, declaring with an oath that he would 
brain the first man that dared to lift a finger. And the rest of 
the captives continued to shamble on, stirring up the dust of 
the road with their shuffling feet, with eyes averted and 
shoulders bowed, cowed and abjectly submissive as a drove of 
cattle. 

“ Oh ! how good it would seem to slap the fellow’s face just 


4i6 


THE DOWNFALL. 


once ! ” murmured Maurice, as if he meant it. “ How I should 
like to let him have just one from the shoulder, and drive his 
teeth down his dirty throat ! ” 

And during the remainder of their march he could not endure 
to look on that captain, with his ugly, supercilious face. 

They had entered Sedan by this and were crossing the Pont 
de Meuse, and the scenes of violence and brutality became more 
numerous than ever. A woman darted forward and would 
have embraced a boyish young sergeant — likely she was his 
mother — and was repulsed with a blow from a musket-butt that 
felled her to the ground. On the Place Turenne the guards 
hustled and maltreated some citizens because they cast provisions 
to the prisoners. In the Grande Rue one of the convoy fell in 
endeavoring to secure a bottle that a lady extended to him, and 
was assisted to his feet with kicks. For a week now Sedan 
had witnessed the saddening spectacle of the defeated driven 
like cattle through its streets, and seemed no more accustomed 
to it than at the beginning ; each time a fresh detachment 
passed the city was stirred to its very depths by a movement of 
pity and indignation. 

Jean had recovered his equanimity; his thoughts, like 
Maurice’s, reverted to Henriette, and the idea occurred to him 
that they might see Delaherche somewhere among the throng. 
He gave his friend a nudge of the elbow. 

“ Keep your eyes open if we pass through their street pres- 
ently, will you ? ” 

They had scarce more than struck into the Rue Maqua, 
indeed, when they became aware of several pairs of eyes 
turned on the column from one of the tall windows of the fac- 
tory, and as they drew nearer recognized Delaherche and his 
wife Gilberte, their elbows resting on the railing of the balcony, 
and behind them the tall, rigid form of old Madame Delaherche. 
They had a supply of bread with them, and the manufacturer 
was tossing the loaves down into the hands that were upstretched 
with tremulous eagerness to receive them. Maurice saw at 
once that his sister was not there, while Jean anxiously watched 
the flying loaves, fearing there might none be left for them. 
They both had raised their arms and were waving them franti- 
cally above their head, shouting meanwhile with all the force 
of their lungs: 

“ Here we are ! This way, this way ! ” 

The Delaherches seemed delighted to see them in the midst 
of their surprise. Their faces, pallid with emotion, suddenly 


THE DOWNFALL. 


417 


brightened, and they displayed by the warmth of their gestures 
the pleasure they experienced in the encounter. There was 
one solitary loaf left, which Gilberte insisted on throwing with 
her own hands, and pitched it into Jean’s extended arms in such 
a charmingly awkward way that she gave a winsome laugh at 
her own expense. Maurice, unable to stop on account of the 
pressure from the rear, turned his head and shouted^ in a tone 
of anxious inquiry : 

“And Henriette ? Henriette ? “ 

Delaherche replied with a long farrago, but his voice was in- 
audible in the shuffling tramp of so many feet. He seemed to 
understand that the young man had failed to catch his mean- 
ing, for he gesticulated like a semaphore ; there was one gesture 
in particular that he repeated several times, extending his arm 
with a sweeping motion toward the south, apparently intending 
to convey the idea of some point in the remote distance : 
Off there, away off there. Already the head of the column was 
wheeling into the Rue du Minil, the fapade of the factory was 
lost to sight, together with the kindly faces of the three Dela- 
herches ; the last the two friends saw of them was the flutter- 
ing of the white handkerchief with which Gilberte waved them 
a farewell. 

“ What did he say ? ’’ asked Jean. 

Maurice, in a fever of anxiety, was still looking to the rear 
where there was nothing to be seen. “I don’t know; I could 
not understand him ; I shall have no peace of mind until I hear 
from her.” 

And the trailing, shambling line crept slowly onward, the 
Prussians urging on the weary men with the brutality of con- 
querors ; the column left the city by the Minil gate in straggling, 
long-drawn array, hastening their steps, like sheep at whose 
heels the dogs are snapping. 

When they passed through Bazeilles Jean and Maurice 
thought of Weiss, and cast their eyes about in an effort to dis- 
tinguish the site of the little house that had been defended 
with such bravery. While they were at Camp Misery they had 
heard the woeful tale of slaughter and conflagration that had 
blotted the pretty village from existence, and the abominations 
that they now beheld exceeded all they had dreamed of or 
imagined. At the expiration of twelve days the ruins were 
smoking still ; the tottering walls had fallen in, there were not 
ten houses standing. It afforded them some small comfort, 
however, to meet a procession of carts and wheelbarrows 


4i8 


TBE DOWNFALL. 


loaded with Bavarian helmets and muskets that had been col- 
lected after the conflict. That evidence of the chastisement 
that had been inflicted on those murderers and incendiaries 
went far toward mitigating the affliction of defeat. 

The column was to halt at Douzy to give the men an oppor- 
tunity to eat breakfast. It was not without much suffering 
that they reached that place ; already the prisoners’ strength 
was giving out, exhausted as they were by their ten days of 
fasting. Those who the day before had availed of the abundant 
supplies to gorge themselves were seized with vertigo, their 
enfeebled leg^ refused to support their weight, and their glut- 
tony, far from restoring their lost strength, was a further source 
of weakness to them. The consequence was that, w^hen the 
train was halted in a meadow to the left of the village, these 
poor creatures flung themselves upon the ground with no 
desire to eat. Wine was wanting ; some charitable women who 
came, bringing a few bottles, were driven off by the sentries. 
One of them in her affright fell and sprained her ankle, and 
there ensued a painful scene of tears and hysterics, during 
which the Prussians confiscated the bottles and drank their 
contents amid jeers and insulting laughter. This tender com- 
passion of the peasants for the poor soldiers who were being 
led away into captivity was manifested constantly along the 
route, while it was said the harshness they displayed toward 
the generals amounted almost to cruelty. At that same Douzy, 
only a few days previously, the villagers had hooted and reviled 
a number of paroled officers who were on their way to Pont-a- 
Mousson. The roads were not safe for general officers ; men 
wearing the blouse — escaped soldiers, or deserters, it may be — 
fell on them with pitch-forks and endeavored to take their life 
as traitors, credulously pinning their faith to that legend of 
bargain and sale which, even twenty years later, was to con- 
tinue to shed its opprobrium upon those leaders who had com- 
manded armies in that campaign. 

Maurice and Jean ate half their bread, and were so fortunate 
as to have a mouthful of brandy with which to wash it down, 
thanks to the kindness of a worthy old farmer. When the 
order was given to resume their advance, however, the distress 
throughout the convoy was extreme. They were to halt for 
the night at Mouzon, and although the march was a short one, 
it seemed as if it would tax the men’s strength more severely 
than they could bear ; they could not get on their feet without 
giving utterance to cries of pain, so stiff did their tired legs 


THE DOWNFALL, 


419 


become the moment they stopped to rest. Many removed 
their shoes to relieve their galled and bleeding feet. Dysen- 
tery continued to rage ; a man fell before they had gone half 
a mile, and they had to prop him against a wall and leave him. 
A little further on two others sank at the foot of a hedge, and 
it was night before an old woman came along and picked them 
up. All were stumbling, tottering, and dragging themselves 
along, supporting their forms with canes, which the Prussians, 
perhaps in derision, had suffered them to cut at the margin of 
a wood. They were a straggling array of tramps and beggars, 
covered with sores, haggard, emaciated, and footsore; a sight to 
bring tears to the eyes of the most stony-hearted. And the 
guards continued to be as brutally strict as ever ; those who 
for any purpose attempted to leave the ranks were driven back 
with blows, and the platoon that brought up the rear had 
orders to prod with their bayonets those who hung back. A 
sergeant having refused to go further, the captain summoned 
two of his men and instructed them to seize him, one by either 
arm, and in this manner the wretched man was dragged over 
the ground until he agreed to walk. And what made the 
whole thing more bitter and harder to endure was the utter 
insignificance of that little pimply-faced, bald-headed officer, 
so insufferably consequential in his brutality, who took advan- 
tage of his knowledge of French to vituperate the prisoners in 
it in curt, incisive words that cut and stung like the lash of a 
whip. 

“ Oh ! ” Maurice furiously exclaimed, “ to get the puppy in 
my hands and drain him of his blood, drop by drop ! " 

His powers of endurance were almost exhausted, but it was 
his rage that he had to choke down, even more than his 
fatigue, that was cause of his suffering. Everything exasper- 
ated him and set on edge his tingling nerves ; the harsh notes 
of the Prussian trumpets particularly, which inspired him with 
a desire to scream each time he heard them. He felt he 
should never reach the end of their cruel journey without some 
outbreak that would bring down on him the utmost severity of 
the guard. Even now, when traversing the smallest hamlets, 
he suffered horribly and felt as if he should die with shame to 
behold the eyes of the women fixed pityingly on him ; what 
would it be when they should enter Germany, and the populace 
of the great cities should crowd the streets to laugh and jeer 
at them as they passed ? And he pictured to himself the cattle 
cars into which they would be crowded for transportation, the 


420 


THE DOWNFALL. 


discomforts and humiliations they would have to suffer on the 
journey, the dismal life in German fortresses under the leaden, 
wintry sky. No, no ; he would have none of it ; better to take 
the risk of leaving his bones by the roadside on French soil 
than go and rot off yonder, for months and months, perhaps, 
in the dark depths of a casemate. 

“ Listen,” he said below his breath to Jean, who was walking 
at his side ; “ we will wait until we come to a wood; then we’ll 
break through the guards and run for it among the trees. The 
Belgian frontier is not far away ; we shall have no trouble in 
finding someone to guide us to it.” 

Jean, accustomed as he was to look at things coolly and cal- 
culate chances, put his veto on the mad scheme, although he, 
too, in his revolt, was beginning to meditate the possibilities of 
an escape. 

“ Have you taken leave of your senses ! the guard will fire 
on us, and we shall both be killed.” 

But Maurice replied there was a chance the soldiers might 
not hit them, and then, after all, if their aim should prove true, 
it would not matter so very much. 

“Very well ! ” rejoined Jean, “ but what is going to become 
of us afterward, dressed in uniform as we are ? You know per- 
fectly well that the country is swarming in every direction with 
Prussian troops ; we could not go far unless we had other 
clothes to put on. No, no, my lad, it’s too risky ; I’ll not let 
you attempt such an insane project.” 

And he took the young man’s arm and held it pressed 
against his side, as if they were mutually sustaining each other, 
continuing meanwhile to chide and soothe him in a tone that 
was at once rough and affectionate. 

Just then the sound of a whispered conversation close be- 
hind them caused them to turn and look around. It was 
Chouteau and Loubet, who had left the peninsula of Iges that 
morning at the same time as they, and whom they had managed 
to steer clear of until the present moment. Now the two 
worthies were close at their heels, and Chouteau must have 
overheard Maurice’s words, his plan for escaping through the 
mazes of a forest, for he had adopted it on his own behalf. 
His breath was hot upon their neck as he murmured : 

“ Say, comrades, count us in on that. That’s a capital idea 
of yours, to skip the ranch. Some of the boys have gone al- 
ready, and sure we’re not going to be such fools as to let 
those bloody pigs drag us away like dogs into their infernal 


THE DOWNFALL. 


421 


country. What do you say, eh ? Shall we four make a break 
for liberty ? ” 

Maurice’s excitement was rising to fever-heat again ; Jean 
turned and said to the tempter : 

“ If you are so anxious to get away, why don’t you go ? there’s 
nothing to prevent you. What are you up to, any way ? ’” 

He flinched a little before the corporal’s direct glance, and 
allowed the true motive of his proposal to escape him. 

Dame ! it would be better that four should share the under- 
taking. One or two of us might have a chance of getting off.” 

Then Jean, with an emphatic shake of the head, refused to 
have anything whatever to do with the matter ; he distrusted 
the gentleman, he said, as he was afraid he would play them some 
of his dirty tricks. He had to exert all his authority with 
Maurice to retain him on his side, for at that very moment an 
opportunity presented itself for attempting the enterprise ; 
they were passing the border of a small but very dense wood, 
separated from the road only by the width of a field that was 
covered by a thick growth of underbrush. Why should they 
not dash across that field and vanish in the thicket ? was there 
not safety for them in that direction ? 

Loubet had so far said nothing. His mind was made up, 
however, that he was not going to Germany to run to seed in 
one of their dungeons, and his nose, mobile as a hound's, was 
sniffing the atmosphere, his shifty eyes were watching for the 
favorable moment. He would trust to his legs and his mother 
wit, which had always helped him out of his scrapes thus far. 
His decision was quickly made. 

“ Ah, zut ! I’ve had enough of it ; I’m off ! ” 

He broke through the line of the escort, and with a single 
bound was in the field, Chouteau following his example and 
running at his side. Two of the Prussian soldiers immediately 
started in pursuit, but the others seemed dazed, and it did not 
occur to them to send a ball after the fugitives. The entire 
episode was so soon over that it was not easy to note its differ- 
ent phases. Loubet dodged and doubled among the bushes 
and it appeared as if -he would certainly succeed in getting* off, 
while Chouteau, less ‘nimble, was on the point of being cap- 
tured, but the latter, summoning up all his energies in a supreme 
burst of speed, caught up with his comrade and dexterously 
tripped him ; and while the two Prussians were lumbering up 
to secure the fallen man, the other darted into the wood and 
vanished. The guard; finally remembering that they had n\us.-« 


422 


THE DOWNFALL. 


kets, fired a few ineffectual shots, and there was some attempt 
made to search the thicket, which resulted in nothing. 

Meantime the two soldiers were pummeling poor Loubet, 
who had not regained his feet. The captain came running up, 
beside himself with anger, and talked of making an example, and 
with this encouragement kicks and cuffs and blows from musket- 
butts continued to rain down upon the wretched man with such 
fury that when at last they stood him on his feet he was found 
to have an arm broken and his skull fractured. A peasant 
came along, driving a cart, in which he was placed, but he died 
before reaching Mouzon. 

“ You see,” was all that Jean said to Maurice. 

The two friends cast a look in the direction of the wood 
that sufficiently expressed their sentiments toward the scoun- 
drel who had gained his freedom by such base means, while 
their hearts were stirred with feelings of deepest compassion 
for the poor devil whom he had made his victim ;fa guzzler and 
a toper, who certainly did not amount to much, but a merry, 
good-natured fellow all the same, and nobody’s fool. And 
that was always the way with those who kept bad company, 
Jean moralizingly observed : they might be very fly, but sooner 
or later a bigger rascal was sure to come along and make a 
meal of them. 

Notwithstanding this terrible lesson Maurice, upon reach- 
ing Mouzon, was still possessed by his unalterable determina- 
tion to attempt an escape. The prisoners were in such an 
exhausted condition when they reached the place that the 
Prussians had to assist them to set up the few tents that were 
placed at their disposal. The camp was formed near the town, 
on low and marshy ground, and the worst of the business was 
that another convoy having occupied the spot the day before, 
the field was absolutely invisible under the superincumbent 
filth ; it was no better than a common cesspool, of unimagina- 
ble foulness. The sole means the men had of self-protection 
was to scatter over the ground some large flat stones, of which 
they were so fortunate as to find a number in the vicinity. By 
way of compensation they had a somewhat less hard time of it 
that evening ; the strictness of their guardians was relaxed a 
little once the captain had disappeared, doubtless to seek the 
comforts of an inn. The sentries began by winking at the 
irregularity of the proceeding when some children came along 
and commenced to toss fruit, apples and pears, over their heads 
fo the prisoners ; the next thing was they allowed the people 


THE DOWNFALL. 


423 


of the neighborhood to enter the lines, so that in a short time 
the camp was swarming with impromptu merchants, men and 
women, offering for sale bread, wine, cigars, even. Those who 
had money had no trouble in supplying their needs so far as 
eating, drinking, and smoking were concerned. A bustling 
animation prevailed in the dim twilight ; it was like a corner of 
the market place in a town where a fair is being held. 

But Maurice drew Jean behind their tent and again said to 
him in his nervous, flighty way : 

“ I can’t stand it ; I shall make an effort to get away as soon 
as it is dark. To-morrow our course will take us away from 
the frontier ; it will be too late.” 

“ Very well, we’ll try it,” Jean replied, his powers of resist- 
ance exhausted, his imagination, too, seduced by the pleasing 
idea of freedom. “ They can’t do more than kill us.” 

After that he began to scrutinize more narrowly the venders 
who surrounded him on every side. There were some among 
the comrades who had succeeded in supplying themselves with 
blouse and trousers, and it was reported that some of the char- 
itable people of the place had regular stocks of garments on 
hand, designed to assist prisoners in escaping. And almost 
immediately his attention was attracted to a pretty girl, a tall 
blonde of sixteen with a pair of magnificent eyes, who had on 
her arm a basket containing three loaves of bread. She was 
not crying her wares like the rest ; an anxious, engaging smile 
played on her red lips, her manner was hesitating. He looked 
her steadily in the face ; their glances met and for an instant 
remained confounded. Then she came up, with the embar- 
rassed smile of a girl unaccustomed to such business. 

“ Do you wish to buy some bread ? ” 

He made no reply, but questioned her by an imperceptible 
movement of the eyelids. On her answering yes, by an affirm- 
ative nod of the head, he asked in a very low tone of voice : 

“ There is clothing ? ” 

“ Yes, under the loaves.” 

Then she began to cry her merchandise aloud : “ Bread ! 

bread! who’ll buy my bread?” But when Maurice would 
have slipped a twenty-franc piece into her fingers she drew 
back her hand abruptly and ran away, leaving the basket with 
them. The last they saw of her was the happy, tender look in 
her pretty eyes, as in the distance she turned and smiled on 
them. 

When they were in possession of the basket Jean and Maurice 


424 


THE DOWNFALL. 


found difficulties staring them in the face. They had strayed 
away from their tent, and in their agitated condition felt they 
should never succeed in finding it again. Where were they to 
bestow themselves ? and how effect their change of garments 
It seemed to them that the eyes of the entire assemblage were 
focused on the basket, which Jean carried with an awkward 
air, as if it contained dynamite, and that its contents must be 
plainly visible to everyone. It would not do to waste time, 
however ; they must be up and doing. They stepped into the 
first vacant tent they came to, where each of them hurriedly 
slipped on a pair of trousers and donned a blouse, having first 
deposited their discarded uniforms in the basket, which they 
placed on the ground in a dark corner of the tent and aban- 
doned to its fate. There was a circumstance that gave them 
no small uneasiness, however ; they found only one head- 
covering, a knitted woolen cap, which Jean insisted Maurice 
should wear. The former, fearing his bare-headedness might 
excite suspicion, was hanging about the precincts of the camp 
on the lookout for a covering of some description, when it 
occurred to him to purchase his hat from an extremely dirty 
old man who was selling cigars. 

“ Brussels cigars, three sous apiece, two for five ! ” 

Customs regulations were in abeyance since the battle of 
Sedan, and the imports of Belgian merchandise had been 
greatly stimulated. The old man had been making a hand- 
some profit from his traffic, but that did not prevent him from 
driving a sharp bargain when he understood the reason why 
the two men wanted to buy his hat, a greasy old affair of felt 
with a great hole in its crown. He finally consented to part 
with it for two five-franc pieces, grumbling that he should 
certainly have a cold in his head. 

Then Jean had another idea, which was neither more nor 
less than to buy out the old fellow’s stock in trade, the two 
dozen cigars that remained unsold. The bargain effected, he 
pulled his hat down over his eyes and began to cry in the 
itinerant hawker’s drawling tone : 

“ Here you are, Brussels cigars, two for three sous, two for 
three sous ! ” 

Their safety was now assured. He signaled Maurice to go 
on before. It happened to the latter to discover an umbrella 
lying on the grass ; he picked it up and, as a few drops of rain 
began to fall just then, opened it tranquilly as they were about 
to pass the line of sentries. 


THE DOWNFALL. 


425 


“Two for three sous, two for three sous, Brussels cigars ! ” 

It took Jean less than two minutes to dispose of his stock of 
merchandise. The men came crowding about him with^chaff 
and laughter : a reasonable fellow, that ; he didn’t rob poor 
chaps of their money ! The Prussians themselves were 
attracted by such unheard-of bargains, and he was compelled 
to trade with them. He had all the time been working his way 
toward the edge of the enceinte, and his last two cigars went 
to a big sergeant with an immense beard, who could not speak 
a word of French. 

“Don’t walk so fast, confound it!” Jean breathed in a 
whisper behind Maurice’s back. “You’ll have them after 
us.” 

Their legs seemed inclined to run away with them, although 
they did their best to strike a sober gait. It caused them a 
great effort to pause a moment at a cross-roads, where a num- 
ber of people were collected before an inn. Some villagers 
were chatting peaceably with German soldiers, and the two 
runaways made a pretense of listening, and even hazarded a 
few observations on the weather and the probability of the rain 
continuing during the night. They trembled when they be- 
held a man, a fleshy gentleman, eying them attentively, but as 
he smiled with an air of great good-nature they thought they 
might venture to address him, asking in a whisper : 

“ Can you tell us if the road to Belgium is guarded, sir ? ” 

“ Yes, it is ; but you will be safe if you cross this wood and 
afterward cut across the fields, to the left.” 

Once they were in the wood, in the deep, dark silence of the 
slumbering trees, where no sound reached their ears, where 
nothing stirred and they believed their safety was assured them, 
they sank into each other’s arms in an uncontrollable impulse 
of emotion. Maurice was sobbing violently, while big tears tric- 
kled slowly down J ean’s cheeks. It was the natural revulsion of 
their overtaxed feelings after the long-protracted ordeal they 
had passed through, the joy and delight of their mutual assur- 
ance that their troubles were at an end, and that thenceforth 
suffering and they were to be strangers. And united by the 
memory of what they had endured together in ties closer than 
those of brotherhood, they clasped each other in a wild embrace, 
and the kiss that they exchanged at that moment seemed to 
them to possess a savor and a poignancy such as they had never 
experienced before in all their life ; a kiss such as they never 
could receive from lips of woman, sealing their undying friend- 


426 


THE DOWNEALL, 


ship, giving additional confirmation to the certainty that there- 
after their two hearts would be but one, for all eternity. 

When they had separated at last: “Little one,” said Jean, 
in a trembling voice, “ it is well for us to be here, but we are not 
at the end. We must look about a bit and try to find our bear- 
ings.” 

Maurice, although he had no acquaintance with that part of 
the frontier, declared that all they had to do was to pursue a 
straight course, whereon they resumed their way, moving among 
the trees in Indian file with the greatest circumspection, until 
they reached the edge of the thicket. There, mindful of the 
injunction of the kind-hearted villager, they were about to turn 
to the left and take a short cut across the fields, but on cominp 
to a road, bordered with a row of poplars on either side 
they beheld directly in their path the watch-fire of a Prussian de- 
tachment. The bayonet of the sentry, pacing his beat, gleamed 
in the ruddy light, the men were finishing their soup and con- 
versing ; the fugitives stood not upon the order of their going, 
but plunged into the recesses of the wood again, in mortal ter- 
ror lest they might be pursued. They thought they heard the 
sound of voices, of footsteps on their trail, and thus for over an 
hour they wandered at random among the copses, until all idea 
of locality was obliterated from their brain ; now racing like af- 
frighted animals through the underbrush, again brought up all 
standing, the cold sweat trickling down their face, before a tree 
in which they beheld a Prussian. And the end of it was that 
they again came out on the poplar-bordered road not more 
than ten paces from the sentry, and quite near the soldiers, who 
were toasting their toes in tranquil comfort. 

“ Hang the luck ! ” grumbled Jean. “ This must be an en- 
' chan ted wood.” 

This time, however, they had been heard. The sound of 
snapping twigs and rolling stones betrayed them. And as they 
did not answer the challenge of the sentry, but made off at the 
double-quick, the men seized their muskets and sent a shower 
of bullets crashing through the thicket, into which the fugitives 
had plunged incontinently. 

“ Nom de Dieu ! ” ejaculated Jean, with a stifled cry of pain. 

He had received something that felt like the cut of a whip in 
the calf of his left leg, but the impact was so violent that it 
drove him up against a tree. 

“ Are you hurt ? ” Maurice anxiously inquired. 

“ Yes, and in the leg, worse luck ! ” 


THE DOWNFALL. 


427 


They both stood holding their breath and listening, in dread 
expectancy of hearing their pursuers clamoring at their heels ; 
but the firiug had ceased and nothing stirred amid the intense 
stillness that had again settled down upon the wood and the 
surrounding country. It was evident that the Prussians had no 
inclination to beat up the thicket. 

Jean, who was doing his best to keep on his feet, forced back 
a groan. Maurice sustained him with his arm. 

“ Can’t you walk ? ” 

“ I should say not ! ” He gave way to a fit of rage, he, 
always so self-contained. He clenched his fists, could have 
thumped himself. “ God in Heaven, if this is not hard luck ! 
to have one’s legs knocked from under him at the very time he 
is most in need of them ! It’s too bad, too bad, by my soul it 
is ! Go on, you, and put yourself in safety ! ” 

But Maurice laughed quietly as he answered : 

“ That is silly talk ! ” 

He took his friend’s arm and helped him along, for neither 
of them had any desire to linger there. When, laboriously and 
by dint of heroic effort, they had advanced some half-dozen 
paces further, they halted again with renewed alarm at behold- 
ing before them a house, standing at the margin of the wood, 
apparently a sort of farmhouse. Not a light was visible at 
any of the windows, the open courtyard gate yawned upon the 
dark and deserted dwelling. And when they plucked up their 
courage a little and ventured to enter the courtyard, great was 
their surprise to find a horse standing there with a saddle on 
his back, with nothing to indicate the why or wherefore of his 
being there. Perhaps it was the owner’s intention to return, 
perhaps he was lying behind a bush with a bullet in his brain. 
They never learned how it was. 

But Maurice had conceived a new scheme, which appeared to 
afford him great satisfaction. 

“See here, the frontier is too faraway; we should never 
succeed in reaching it without a guide. What do you say to 
changing our plan and going to Uncle Fouchard’s, at Remilly ? 
I am so well acquainted with every inch of the road that I’m 
sure I could take you there with my eyes bandaged. Don’t 
you think it’s a good idea, eh ? I’ll put you on this horse, and 
I suppose Uncle Fouchard will grumble, but he’ll take us in.” 

- Before starting he wished to take a look at the injured leg. 
There were two orifices ; the ball appeared to have entered 
the limb and passed out, fracturing the tibia in its course. The 


THE DOWNFALL. 


'428 

flow of blood had not been great ; he did nothing more than 
bandage the upper part of the calf tightly with his handker- 
chief. 

“ Do you fly, and leave me here,” Jean said again. 

“ Hold your tongue ; you are silly ! ” 

When Jean was seated firmly in the saddle Maurice took 
the bridle and they made a start. It was somewhere about 
eleven o’clock, and he hoped to make the journey in three 
hours, even if they should be unable to proceed faster than a 
walk. A difficulty that he had not thought of until then, how- 
ever, presented itself to his mind and for a moment filled him 
with consternation : how were they to cross the Meuse in order 
to get to the left bank ? • The bridge at Mouzon would certainly 
be guarded. At last he remembered that there was a ferry 
lower down the stream, at Villers, and trusting to luck to be- 
friend him, he shaped his course for that village, striking across 
the meadows and tilled fields of the right bank. All went well 
enough at first ; they had only to dodge a cavalry patrol which 
forced them to hide in the shadow of a wall and remain there 
half an hour. Then the rain began to come down in earnest 
and his progress became more laborious, compelled as he was 
to tramp through the sodden fields beside the horse, which 
fortunately showed itself to be a fine specimen of the equine 
race, and perfectly gentle. On reaching Villers he found that 
his trust in the blind goddess. Fortune, had not been misplaced ; 
the ferryman, who, at that late hour, had just returned from 
setting a Bavarian officer across the river, took them at once 
and landed them on the other shore without delay or accident. 

And it was not until they reached the village, where they 
narrowly escaped falling into the clutches of the pickets who 
were stationed along the entire length of the Remilly road, that 
their dangers and hardships really commenced; again they 
were obliged to take to the fields, feeling their way along blind 
paths and cart-tracks that could scarcely be discerned in the 
darkness. The most trivial obstacle sufficed to drive them 
a long way out of their course. They squeezed through hedges, 
scrambled down and up the steep banks of ditches, forced a 
passage for themselves through the densest thickets. Jean, in 
whom a low fever had developed under the drizzling rain, had 
sunk down crosswise on his saddle in a condition of semi- 
■ consciousness, holding on with both hands by the horse’s mane, 
while Maurice, who had slipped the bridle over his right arm, 
had to steady him by the legs to keep him from tumbling to 


The downfall. 


420 


the ground. For more than a league, for two long, weary 
hours that seemed like an eternity, did they toil onward in 
this fatiguing way ; floundering, stumbling, slipping in such a 
manner that it seemed at every moment as if men and beast 
must land together in a heap at the bottom of some descent.. 
The spectacle they presented was one of utter, abject misery,, 
besplashed with mud, the horse trembling in every limb, the 
man upon his back a helpless mass, as if at his last gasp, the 
other, wild-eyed and pale as death, keeping his feet only by an 
effort of fraternal love. Day was breaking ; it was not far from 
five o’clock when at last they came to Remilly. 

In the courtyard of his little farmhouse, which was situated 
at the extremity of the pass of Harancourt, overlooking the 
village, Father Fouchard was stowing away in his carriole the 
carcasses of two sheep that he had slaughtered the day before. 
The sight of his nephew, coming to him at that hour and in 
that sorry plight, caused him such perturbation of spirit that, 
after the first explanatory words, he roughly cried : 

“ You want me to take you in, you and your friend ? and 
then settle matters with the Prussians afterward, I suppose. 
I’m much obliged to you, but no ! I might as well die right 
straight off and have done with it.” 

He did not go so far, however, as to prohibit Maurice and 
Prosper from taking Jean from the horse and laying him on 
the great table in the kitchen. Silvine ran and got the bolster 
from her bed and slipped it beneath the head of the wounded 
man, who was still unconscious. But it irritated the old fellow 
to see the man lying on his table ; he grumbled and fretted, 
saying that the kitchen was no place for him ; why did they 
not take him away to the hospital at once ? since there for- 
tunately was a hospital at Remilly, near the church, in the 
old schoolhouse ; and there was a big room in it, with every- 
thing nice and comfortable. 

“ To the hospital ! ” Maurice hotly replied, “ and have' 
the Prussians pack him off to Germany as soon as he is well,, 
for you know they treat all the wounded as prisoners of war. 
Do you take me for a fool, uncle ? I did not bring him here 
to give him up.” 

Things were beginning to look dubious, the uncle was 
threatening to pitch them out upon the road, when someone 
mentioned Henriette’s name. 

“ What about Flenriette ? ” inquired the young man. 

And he learned that his sister had been an inmate of the 


43 ^ 


THE DOWNFALL, 


house at Remilly for the last two days ; her affliction had 
weighed so heavily on her that life at Sedan, where her exist- 
ence had hitherto been a happy one, was become a burden 
greater than she could bear. Chancing to meet with Doctor 
Dalichamp of Raucourt, with whom she was acquainted, her 
conversation with him had been the means of bringing her to 
take up her abode with Father Fouchard, in whose house she 
had a little bedroom, in order to devote herself entirely to the 
care of the sufferers in the neighboring hospital. That 
alone, she said, would serve to quiet her bitter memories. She 
paid her board and was the means of introducing many small 
comforts into the life of the farmhouse, which caused Father 
Fouchard to regard her with an eye of favor. The weather 
was always fine with him, provided he was making money. 

“ Ah ! so my sister is here,” said Maurice. “ That must 
have been what M. Delaherche wished to tell me, with 
his gestures that I could not understand. Very well ; if she 
is here, that settles it ; we shall remain.” 

Notwithstanding his fatigue he started off at once in quest 
of her at the ambulance, where she had been on duty during 
the preceding night, while the uncle cursed his luck that kept 
him from being off with the carriole to sell his mutton among 
the neighboring villages, so long as the confounded business 
that he had got mixed up in remained unfinished. 

When Maurice returned with Henriette they caught the old 
man making a critical examination of the horse, that Prosper 
had led away to the stable. The animal seemed to please 
him ; he was knocked up, but showed signs of strength and 
endurance. The young man laughed and told his uncle he 
might have him as a gift if he fancied hini, while Henriette, 
taking her relative aside, assured him Jean should be no 
expense to him ; that she would take charge of him and nurse 
him, and he might have the little room behind the cow-stables, 
where no Prussian would ever think to look for him. And 
Father Fouchard, still wearing a very sulky face and but half 
convinced that there was anything to be made out of the affair, 
finally closed the discussion by jumping into his carriole and 
driving off, leaving her at liberty to act as she pleased. 

It took Henriette but a few minutes, with the assistance of 
Silvine and Prosper, to put the room in order ; then she had 
Jean brought in and they laid him on a cool, clean bed, he 
giving no sign of life during the operation save to mutter some 
unintelligible words. He opened his eyes and looked about 


THE DOWNFALL, 


431 


him, but seemed not to be conscious of anyone’s presence in 
the room. Maurice, who was just beginning to be aware how 
utterly prostrated he was by his fatigue, was drinking a glass 
of wine and eating a bit of cold meat, left over from the 
yesterday’s dinner, when Doctor Dalichamp came in, as was 
his daily custom previous to visiting the hospital, and the 
young man, in his anxiety for his friend, mustered up his* 
strength to follow him, together with his sister, to the bedside 
of the patient. 

The doctor was a short, thick-set man, with a big round 
head, on which the hair, as well as the fringe of beard about 
lus face, had long since begun to be tinged with gray. The 
skin of his ruddy, mottled face was tough and indurated as a 
peasant’s, spending as he did most of his time in the open air, 
always on the go to relieve the sufferings of his fellow-crea- 
tures ; while the large, bright eyes, the massive nose, indica- 
tive of obstinacy, and the benignant if somewhat sensual mouth 
bore witness to the lifelong charities and good works of the 
honest country doctor ; a little brusque at times, not a man of 
genius, but whom many years of practice in his profession had 
made an excellent healer. 

When he had examined Jean, still in a comatose state, he 
murmured: 

“ I am very much afraid that amputation will be necessary.” 

The words produced a painful impression on Maurice and 
Henriette. Presently, however, he added : 

“ Perhaps we may be able to save the leg, but it will require 
the utmost care and attention, and will take a very long time. 
For the moment his physical and mental depression is such 
that the only thing to do is to let him sleep. To-morrow we 
shall know more.” 

Then, having applied a dressing to the wound, he turned to 
Maurice, whom he had known in bygone days, when he was a 
boy. 

” And you, my good fellow, would be better off in bed than 
sitting there.” 

The young man continued to gaze before him into vacancy, 
as if he had not heard. In the confused hallucination that was 
due to his fatigue he developed a kind of delirium, a super- 
sensitive nervous excitation that embraced all he had suffered 
in mind and body since the beginning of the campaign. The 
spectacle of his friend’s wretched state, his own condition, 
scarce less pitiful, defeated, his hands tied, good for nothing, 


432 


THE DOWNFALL. 


the reflection that all those heroic efforts had culminated in 
such disaster, all combined to incite him to frantic rebellion 
against destiny. At last he spoke. 

“ It is not ended ; no, no ! we have not seen the end, and I 
must go away. Since he must lie there on his back for weeks, 
for months, perhaps, I cannot stay ; I must go, I must go at 
once. You will assist me, won’t you, doctor? you will supply 
me with the means to escape and get back to Paris ? ” 

Pale and trembling, Henriette threw her arms about him and 
caught him to her bosom. 

“What words are those you speak ? enfeebled as you are, 
after all the suffering you have endured ! but think not I shall 
let you go ; you shall stay here with me ! Have you not paid 
the debt you owe your country ? and should you not think of 
me, too, whom you would leave to loneliness ? of me, who 
have nothing now in all the wide world save you ?” 

Their tears flowed and were mingled. They held each other 
in a wild tumultuous embrace, with that fond affection which, 
in twins, often seems as if it antedated existence. But for all 
that his exaltation did not subside, but assumed a higher pitch. 

“ I tell you I must go. Should I not go I feel I should die 
of grief and shame. You can have no idea how my blood boils 
and seethes in my veins at the thought of remaining here in 
idleness. I tell you that this business is not going to end thus, 
that we must be avenged. On whom, on what ? Ah ! that I 
cannot tell ; but avenged we must and shall be for such misfor- 
tune, in order that we may yet have courage to live on ! ” 

Doctor Dalichamp, who had been watching the scene with 
intense interest, cautioned Henriette by signal to make no reply. 
Maurice would doubtless be more rational after he should have 
slept ; and sleep he did, all that day and all the succeeding 
night, for more than twenty hours, and never stirred hand or 
foot. When he awoke next morning, however, he was as in- 
flexible as ever in his determination to go away. The fever 
had subsided ; he was gloomy and restless, in haste to with- 
draw himself from influences that he feared might weaken his 
patriotic fervor. His sister, with many tears, made up her 
mind that he must be allowed to have his way, and Doctor 
Dalichamp, when he came to make his morning visit, promised 
to do what he could to facilitate the young man’s escape by 
turning over to him the papers of a hospital attendant who had 
died recently at Raucourt. It was arranged that Maurice 
should don the gray blouse with the red cross of Geneva on 


THE DOWNFALL. 


433 ^ 


its sleeve and pass through Belgium, thence to make hiS- way 
as best he might to Paris, access to which was as yet uninter- 
rupted. 

He did not leave the house that day, keeping himself out oP 
sight and waiting for night to come. He scarcely opened his-^ 
mouth, although he did make an attempt to enlist the new' 
farm-hand in his enterprise. 

“ Say, Prosper, don’t you feel as if you would like to go back* 
and have one more look at the Prussians ? ” 

The ex-chasseur d’Afrique, who was eating a cheese sand- 
wich, stopped and held his knife suspended in the air. 

“It don’t strike me that it is worth while, from what we' 
were allowed to see of them before. Why should you wish me 
to go back there, when the only use our generals can find for 
the cavalry is to send it in after the battle is ended and let it 
be cut to pieces ? No, faith, I’m sick of the business, giving 
us such dirty work as that to do ! ” There was silence between 
them for a moment ; then he went on, doubtless to quiet the 
reproaches of his conscience as a soldier : “ And then the 
work is too heavy here just now ; the plowing is just com- 
mencing, and then there’ll be the fall sowing to be looked after. 
We must think of the farm work, mustn’t we ? for fighting is 
well enough in its way, but what would become of us if we 
should cease to till the ground ? You see how it is ; I can’t 
leave my work. Not that I am particularly in love with 
Father Fouchard, for I doubt very strongly if I shall ever see 
the color of his money, but the beasties are beginning to take 
to me, and faith ! when I was up there in the Old Field this 
morning, and gave a look at that d — d Sedan lying yonder in 
the distance, you can’t tell how good it made me feel to be 
guiding my oxen and driving the plow through the furrow, all 
alone in the bright sunshine.” 

As soon as it was fairly dark, Doctbr Dalichamp came driv- 
ing up in his old gig. It was his intention to see Maurice to the 
frontier. Father Fouchard, well pleased to be rid of one of his 
guests at least, stepped out upon the road to watch and make 
sure there were none of the enemy’s patrols prowling in the 
neighborhood, while Silvine put a few stitches in the blouse of 
the defunct ambulance man, on the sleeve of which the red 
cross of the corps was prominently displayed. The doctor, 
before taking his place in the vehicle, examined Jean’s leg 
anew, but could not as yet promise that he would be able to 
save it, The patient was still in a profound lethargy, recog- 


434 


THE DOWNFALL, 


nizing no one, never opening his mouth to speak, and Maurice 
was about to leave him without the comfort of a farewell, when, 
bending over to give him a last embrace, he saw him open his 
eyes to their full extent ; the lips parted, and in a faint voice 
he said : 

“You are going away?” And in reply to their astonished 
looks : “ Yes, I heard what you said, though I could not 
stir. Take the remainder of the money, then. Put your 
hand in my trousers’ pocket and take it.” 

Each of them had remaining nearly two hundred francs of 
the sum they had received from the corps paymaster. 

But Maurice protested. “ The money ! ” he exclaimed. 
“ Why, you have more need of it than 1, who have the use of 
both my legs. Two hundred francs will be abundantly suffi- 
cient to see me to Paris, and to get knocked in the head after- 
ward won’t cost me a penny. 1 thank you, though, old fellow, 
all the same, and good-by and good-luck to you ; thanks, too, 
for having always been so good and thoughtful, for, had it not 
been for you, I should certainly be lying now at the bottom of 
some ditch, like a dead dog.” 

Jean made a deprecating gesture. “ Hush. You owe me 
nothing ; we are quits. Would not the Prussians have gathered 
me in out there the other day had you not picked me up and 
carried me off on your back ? and yesterday again you saved 
me from their clutches. Twice have. I been beholden to you 
for my life, and now I am in your debt. Ah, how unhappy 
I shall be when I am no longer with you ! ” His voice trem- 
bled and tears rose to his eyes. “ Kiss me, dear boy ! ” 

They embraced, and, as it had been in the wood the day 
before, that kiss set the seal to the brotherhood of dangers 
braved in each other’s company, those few weeks of soldier’s 
life in common that had served to bind their hearts together 
with closer ties than years of ordinary friendship could have 
done. Days of famine, sleepless nights, the fatigue of the 
weary march, death ever present to their eyes, these things 
made the foundation on which their affection rested. When 
two hearts have thus by mutual gift bestowed themselves the 
one upon the other and become fused and molten into one, is it 
possible ever to sever the connection ? But the kiss they had 
exchanged the day before, among the darkling shadows of the 
forest, was replete with the joy of their new-found safety and 
the hope that their escape awakened in their bosom, while this 
was the kiss of parting, full of anguish and doubt unutterable. 


^BE DOWNFALL. 


435 

Would they meet again some day ? and how, under what cir- 
cumstances of sorrow or of gladness ? 

Doctor Dalichamp had clambered into his gig and was call* 
ing to Maurice. The young man threw all his heart and soul 
into the embrace he gave his sister Henriette, who, pale as 
death in her black mourning garments, looked on his face in 
silence through her tears. 

“ He whom I leave to your care is my brother. Watch over 
him, love him as I love him ! ” 


IV. 

J EAN’S chamber was a large room, with floor of brick and 
whitewashed walls, that had once done duty as a store-room 
for the fruit grown on the farm. A faint, pleasant odor of 
pears and apples lingered there still, and for furniture there 
wag" an iron bedstead, a pine table and two chairs, to say 
nothing of a huge old walnut clothes-press, tremendously deep 
and wide, that looked as if it might hold an army. A lazy, 
restful quiet reigned there all day long, broken only by the 
deadened sounds that came from the adjacent stables, the 
faint lowing of the cattle, the occasional thud of a hoof upon 
the earthen floor. The window, which had a southern aspect, 
let in a flood of cheerful sunlight ; all the view It afforded was 
a bit of hillside and a wheat field, edged by a little wood. 
And this mysterious chamber was so well hidden from prying 
eyes that never a one in all the world would have suspected its 
existence. 

As it was to be her kingdom, Henriette constituted herself 
lawmaker from the beginning. The regulation was that no 
one save she and the doctor should have access to Jean ; this 
in order to avert suspicion. Silvine, even, was never to set 
foot in the room unless by direction. Early each morning the 
two women came in and put things to rights, and after that, 
all the long day, the door was as impenetrable as if it had been 
a wall of stone. And thus it was that Jean found himself 
suddenly secluded from the world, after many weeks of tumult- 
uous activity, seeing no face save that of the gentle woman 
whose footfall on the floor gave back no sound. She appeared 
to him, as he had beheld her for the first time down yonder in 
Sedan, like an apparition, with her somewhat large mouth, 
her delicate, small features, her hair the hue of ripened grain. 


43 ^ 


THE DOlVEtEAlL. 


hovering about his bedside and ministering to his wants with 
an air of infinite goodness. 

■* The patient’s fever was so violent during the first few days 
that Henriette scarce ever left him. Doctor Dalichamp 
dropped in every morning on his way to the hospital and ex- 
amined and dressed the wound. As the ball had passed out, 
after breaking the tibia, he was surprised that the case pre- 
sented no better aspect ; he feared there was a splinter of the 
bone remaining there that he had not succeeded in finding 
with the probe, and that might make resection necessary. He 
mentioned the matter to Jean, but the young man could not 
endure the thought of an operation that would leave him 
with one leg shorter than the other and lame him permanently. 
No, no ! he would rather die than be a cripple for life. So 
the good doctor, leaving the wound to develop further symp- 
toms, confined himself for the present to applying a dressing 
of lint saturated with sweet oil and phenic acid having first in- 
serted a drain — an India rubber tube — to carry off the pus. 
He frankly told his patient, however, that unless he submitted 
to an operation he must not hope to have the use of his limb 
for a very long time. Still, after the second week, the fever 
subsided and the young man’s general condition was im- 
proved, so long as he could be content to rest quiet in his bed. 

Then Jean’s and Henriette’s relations began to be estab- 
lished on a more systematic basis. Fixed habits commenced 
to prevail ; it seemed to them that they had never lived other- 
wise — that they were to go on living forever in that way. All 
the hours and moments that she did not devote to the ambu- 
lance were spent with him ; she saw to it that he had his food 
and drink at proper intervals. She assisted him to turn in bed 
with a strength of wrist that no one, seeing her slender arms, 
would have supposed was in her. At times they would con- 
verse ; but as a general thing, especially in the earlier days, 
they had not much to say. They never seemed to tire of each 
other’s company, though. On the whole it was a very pleas- 
ant life they led in that calm, restful atmosphere, he with the 
horrible scenes of the battlefield still fresh in his memory, she 
in her widow’s weeds, her heart bruised and bleeding with the 
great loss she had sustained. At first he had experienced a 
sensation of embarrassment, for he felt she was his superior, 
almost a lady, indeed, while he had never been aught more 
than a common soldier and a peasant. He could barely read 
and write. When finally he came to see that she affected no 


TttR DOWMP'ALL, 


437 


airs of superiority, but treated him on the footing of an 
equal, his confidence returned to him in a measure and he 
showed himself in his true colors, as a man of intelligence by 
reason of his sound, unpretentious common sense. Besides, 
he was surprised at times to think he could note a change was 
gradually coming over him ; it seemed to him that his mind 
was less torpid than it had been, that it was clearer and more 
active, that he had novel ideas in his head, and more of them ; 
could it be that the abominable life he had been leading for 
the last two months, his horrible sufferings, physical and moral, 
had exerted a refining influence on him ? But that which as- 
sisted him most to overcome his shyness was to find that she 
was really not so very much wiser than he. She was but a lit- 
tle child when, at her mother’s death, she became the house- 
hold drudge, with her three men to care for, as she herself 
expressed it — her grandfather, her father, and her brother — 
and she had not had the time to lay in a large stock of learning. 
She could read and write, could spell words that were not too 
long, and “do sums,” if they were not too intricate ; and that 
was the extent of her acquirement. And if she continued to 
intimidate him still, if he considered her far and away the 
superior of all other women upon earth, it was because he 
knew the ineffable tenderness, the goodness of heart, the un- 
flinching courage, that animated that frail little body, who 
went about her duties silently and met them as if they had 
been pleasures. 

They had in Maurice a subject of conversation that was of 
common interest to them both and of which they never wearied. 
It was to Maurice’s friend, his brother, to whom she was 
devoting herself thus tenderly, the brave, kind man, so ready 
with his aid in time of trouble, who she felt had made her so 
many times his debtor. She was full to overflowing with a 
sentiment of deepest gratitude and affection, that went on 
widening and deepening as she came to know him better and 
recognize his sterling qualities of head and heart, and he, 
whom she was tending like a little child, was actuated by such 
grateful sentiments that he would have liked to kiss her hands 
each time she gave him a cup of bouillon. Day by day did 
this bond of tender sympathy draw them nearer to each other 
in that profound solitude amid which they lived, harassed by 
an anxiety that they shared in common. When he had utterly 
exhausted his recollections of the dismal march from Rheimsto 
Sedan, to the particulars of which she never seemed to tire of 


THE bO WNFALL 


438 

listening, the same question always rose to their lips ; what 
was Maurice doing then ? why did he not write ? Could it be 
that the blockade of Paris was already complete, and was that 
the reason why they received no news ? They had as yet had 
but one letter from him, written at Rouen, three days after his 
leaving them, in which he briefly stated that he had reached 
that city on his way to Paris, after a long and devious journey. 
And then for a week there had been no further word ; the 
silence had remained unbroken. 

In the morning, after Doctor Dalichamp had attended to 
his patient, he liked to sit a while and chat, putting his cares 
aside for the moment. Sometimes he also returned at evening 
and made a longer visit, and it was in this way that they 
learned what was going on in the great world outside their 
peaceful solitude and the terrible calamities that were desolating 
their country. He was their only source of intelligence ; his 
heart, which beat with patriotic ardor, overflowed with rage 
and grief at every fresh defeat, and thus it was that his sole 
topic of conversation was the victorious progress of the Prus- 
sians, who, since Sedan, had spread themselves over France 
like the waves of some black ocean. Each day brought its 
own tidings of disaster, and resting disconsolately on one of the 
two chairs that stood by the bedside, he would tell in mournful 
tones and with trembling gestures of the increasing gravity of 
the situation. Oftentimes he came with his pockets stuffed 
with Belgian newspapers, which he would leave behind him 
when he went away. And thus the echoes of defeat, days, 
weeks, after the event, reverberated in that quiet room, serving 
to unite yet more closely in community of sorrow the two poor 
sufferers who were shut within its walls. 

It was from some of those old newspapers that Henriette 
read to Jean the occurrences at Metz, the Titanic struggle 
that was three times renewed, separated on each occasion by a 
day’s interval. The story was already five weeks old, but it 
was new to him, and he listened with a bleeding heart to the 
repetition of the miserable narrative of defeat to which he was 
not a stranger. In the deathly stillness of the room the in- 
cidents of the woeful tale unfolded themselves as Henriette, 
with the sing-song enunciation of a schoolgirl, picked out her 
words and sentences. When, after Froeschwiller and Spick- 
eren, the ist corps, routed and broken into fragments, had 
swept away with it the 5th, the other corps stationed along the 
frontier en Melon from Metz to Bitche, first wavering, then re- 


THE DOWNFALL. 


439 


treating in their consternation at those reverses, had ultimately 
concentrated before the intrenched camp on the right bank of 
the Moselle. But what waste of precious time was there, 
when they should not have lost a moment in retreating on 
Paris, a movement that was presently to be attended with such 
difficulty ! The Emperor had been compelled to turn over 
the supreme command to Marshal Bazaine, to whom every- 
one looked with confidence for a victory. Then, on the 14th* 
came the affair of Borny, when the army was attacked at the 
moment when it was at last about to cross the stream, having 
to sustain the onset of two German armies : Steinmetz’s, which 
was encamped in observation in front of the intrenched camp, 
and Prince Frederick Charles’s, which had passed the river 
higher up and come down along the left bank in order to bar 
the French from access to their country ; Borny, where the 
firing did not begin until it was three o’clock ; Borny, that 
barren victory, at the end of which the French remained mas- 
ters of their positions, but which left them astride the Moselle, 
tied hand and foot, while the turning movement of the second 
German army was being successfully accomplished. After 
that, on the i6th, was the battle of Rezonville ; all our corps 
were at last across the stream, although, owing to the con- 
fusion that prevailed at the junction of the Mars-la-Tour and 
Etain roads, which the Prussians had gained possession of 
early in the morning by a brilliant movement of their cavalry 
and artillery, the 3d and 4th corps were hindered in their 
march and unable to get up ; a slow, dragging, confused battle, 
which, up to two o’clock, Bazaine, with only a handful of men 
opposed to him, should have won, but which he wound up by 
losing, thanks to his inexplicable fear of being cut off from 
Metz ; a battle of immense extent, spreading over leagues of 
hill and plain, where the French, attacked in front and flank, 
seemed willing to do almost anything except advance, affording 
the enemy time to concentrate and to all appearances co-operat- 
ing with them to ensure the success of the Prussian plan, which 
was to force their withdrawal to the other side of the river. 
And on the i8th, after their retirement to the intrenched 
camp, Saint-Privat was fought, the culmination of the gigantic 
struggle, where the line of battle extended more than eight 
miles in length, two hundred thousand Germans with seven 
hundred guns arrayed against a hundred and twenty thousand 
French with but five hundred guns, the Germans facing 
toward Germany, the French toward France, as if invaders 

* August. — T r. 


440 


THE DOWNFALL. 


and invaded had inverted their roles in the singular tactical 
movements that had been going on ; after two o’clock the 
conflict was most sanguinary, the Prussian Guard being re- 
pulsed with tremendous slaughter and Bazaine, with a left 
wing that withstood the onsets of the enemy like a wall of 
adamant, for a long time victorious, up to the moment, at 
the approach of evening, when the weaker right wing was 
compelled by the terrific losses it had sustained to abandon 
Saint-Privat, involving in its rout the remainder of the army, 
which, defeated and driven back under the walls of Metz, was 
thenceforth to be imprisoned in a circle of flame and iron. 

As Henriette pursued her reading Jean momently inter- 
rupted her to say : 

‘‘ Ah, well ! and to think that we fellows, after leaving 
Rheims, were looking for Bazaine ! They were always telling 
us he was coming ; now I can see why he never came ! ” 

The marshal’s despatch, dated the 19th, after the battle 
of Saint-Privat, in which he spoke of resuming his retrograde 
movement by way of Montmedy, th*at despatch which had for 
its effect the advance of the army of Chalons, would seem to 
have been nothing more than the report of a defeated general, 
desirous to present matters under their most favorable aspect, 
and it was not until a considerably later period, the 29th, when 
the tidings of the approach of this relieving army had reached 
him through the Prussian lines, that he attempted a final effort, 
on the right bank this time, at Noiseville, but in such a feeble, 
half-hearted way that on the ist of September, the day when 
the army of Chalons was annihilated at Sedan, the army of 
Metz fell back to advance no more, and became as if dead to 
France. The marshal, whose conduct up to that time may 
fairly be characterized as that of a leader of only moderate 
ability, neglecting his opportunities and failing to move when 
the roads were open to him, after that blockaded by forces 
greatly superior to his own, was now about to be seduced by 
alluring visions of political greatness and become a con- 
spirator and a traitor. 

But in the papers that Doctor Dalichamp brought them 
Bazaine was still the great man and the gallant soldier, to whom 
France looked for her salvation. 

And Jean wanted certain passages read to him again, in order 
that he might more clearly understand how it was that while 
the third German army, under the Crown Prince of Prussia, had 
been leading them such a dance, and the first and second were 


THE DOWNFALL. 


441 


besieging Metz, the latter were so strong in men and guns that 
it had been possible to form from them a fourth army, which, 
under the Crown Prince of Saxony, had done so much to de- 
cide the fortune of the day at Sedan. Then, having obtained 
the information he desirqd, resting on that bed of suffering to 
which his wound condemned him, he forced himself to hope 
in spite of all. 

“ That’s how it is, you see ; we were not so strong as they ! 
No one can ever get at the rights of such matters while the 
fighting is going on. Never mind, though ; you have read the 
figures as the newspapers give them : Bazaine has a hundred 
and fifty thousand men with him, he has three hundred thou- 
sand small arms and more than five hundred pieces of artil- 
lery ; take my word for it, he is not going to let himself be 
caught in such a scrape as we were. The fellows all say he is 
a tough man to deal with ; depend on it he’s fixing up a nasty 
dose for the enemy, and he’ll make ’em swallow it.” 

Henriette nodded her head and appeared to agree with him, 
in order to keep him in a cheerful frame of mind. She could 
not follow those complicated operations of the armies, but 
had a presentiment of coming, inevitable evil. Her voice was 
fresh and clear ; she could have gone on reading thus for hours, 
only too glad to have it in her power to relieve the tedium of 
his long day, though at times, when she came to some narra- 
tive of slaughter, her eyes would fill with tears that made the 
words upon the printed page a blur. She was doubtless 
thinking of her husband’s fate, how he had been shot down 
at the foot of the wall and his body desecrated by the touch 
of the Bavarian officer’s boot. 

“If it gives you such pain,” Jean said in surprise, “you 
need not read the battles ; skip them.” 

But, gentle and self-sacrificing as ever, she recovered her- 
self immediately. 

“ No, no ; don’t mind my weakness; I assure you it is a 
pleasure to me.” 

One evening early in October, when the wind was blowing 
a small hurricane outside, she came in from the ambulance 
and entered the room with an excited air, saying : 

“ A letter from Maurice ! the doctor just gave it me.” 

With each succeeding morning the twain had been becom- 
ing more and more alarmed that the young man sent them no 
word, and now that for a whole week it had been rumored 
everywhere that the investment of Paris was complete, they 


442 


THE DOWNFALL. 


were more disturbed in mind than ever, despairing of receiv- 
ing tidings, asking themselves what could have happened him 
after he left Rouen. And now the reason of the long silence 
was made clear to them: the letter that he had addressed 
from Paris to Doctor Dalichamp oi> the i8th, the very day 
that ended railway communication with Havre, had gone 
astray, and had only reached them at last by a miracle, after a 
long and circuitous journey. 

“Ah, the dear boy!” said Jean, radiant with delight. 
“ Read it to me, quick ! ” 

The wind was howling and shrieking more dismally than 
ever, the window of the apartment strained and rattled as if 
someone were trying to force an entrance. Henriette went 
and got the little lamp, and placing it on the table beside the 
bed applied herself to the reading of the missive, so close to 
Jean that their faces almost touched. There was a sensation 
of warmth and comfort in the peaceful room amid the roaring 
of the storm that raged without. 

It was a long letter of eight closely filled pages, in which 
Maurice first told how, soon after his arrival on the i6th, he 
had had the good fortune to get into a line regiment that was 
being recruited up to its full strength. Then, reverting to 
facts of history, he described in brief but vigorous terms the 
principal events of that month of terror : how Paris, recover- 
ing her sanity in a measure after the madness into which the 
disasters of Wissembourg and Froesch wilier had driven her, 
had comforted herself with hopes of future victories, had 
cheered herself with fresh illusions, such as lying stories of 
the army’s successes, the appointment of Bazaine to the chief 
command, the levee en masse, bogus dispatches, which the 
ministers themselves read from the tribune, telling of heca- 
tombs of slaughtered Prussians. And then he went on to tell 
how, on the 3d of September, the thunderbolt had a second 
time burst over the unhappy capital : all hope gone, the mis- 
informed, abused, confiding city dazed by that crushing blow 
of destiny, the cries : “ Down with the Empire ! ” that re- 
sounded at night upon the boulevards, the brief and gloomy 
session of the Chamber at which Jules Favre read the draft of 
the bill that conceded the popular demand. Then on the next 
day, the ever-memorable 4th of September, was the upheaval 
of all things, the second Empire swept from existence in 
atonement for its mistakes and crimes, the entire population 
of the capital in the streets, a torrent of humanity a half a 


THE DOWNFALL. 


443 


million strong filling the Place de la Concorde and streaming 
onward in the bright sunshine of that beautiful Sabbath day to 
the great gates of the Corps L^gislatif, feebly guarded by a 
handful of troops, who up-ended their muskets in the air in 
token of sympathy with the populace — smashing in the doors, 
swarming into the assembly chambers, whence Jules Favre, 
Gambetta and other deputies of the Left were even then on the 
point of departing to proclaim the Republic at the Hotel de 
Ville ; while on the Place Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois a little 
wicket of the Louvre opened timidly and gave exit to the 
Empress-regent, attired in black garments and accompanied by 
a single female friend, both the women trembling with affright 
and striving to conceal themselves in the depths of the public 
cab, which went jolting with its scared inmates from the 
Tuileries, through whose apartments the mob was at that mo- 
ment streaming. On the same day Napoleon III. left the inn 
at Bouillon, where he had passed his first night of exile, bend- 
ing his way toward Wilhelmshohe. 

Here Jean, a thoughtful expression on his face, interrupted 
Henriette. 

“ Then we have a republic now? So much the better, if it 
is going to help us whip the Prussians ! ” 

But he shook his head ; he had always been taught to look 
distrustfully on republics when he was a peasant. And then, 
too, it did not seem to him a good thing that they should be 
of differing minds when the enemy was fronting them. After 
all, though, it was manifest there had to be a change of some 
kind, since everyone knew the Empire was rotten to the core 
and the people would have no more of it. 

Henriette finished the letter, which concluded with a men- 
tion of the approach of the German armies. On the 13th, the 
day when a committee of the Government of National Defense 
had established its quarters at Tours, their advanced guards 
had been seen at Lagny, to the east of Paris. On the 14th 
and 15th they were at the very gates of the city, at Creteil 
and Joinville-le-Pont. On the i8th, however, the day when 
Maurice wrote, he seemed to have ceased to believe in the 
possibility of maintaining a strict blockade of Paris ; he ap- 
peared to be under the influence of one of his hot fits of blind 
confidence„characterizing the siege as a senseless and impu- 
dent enterprise that would come to an ignominious end before 
they were three weeks older, relying on the armies that the 
provinces would surely send to their relief, to say nothing of 


444 


THE DOWNFALL. 


the army of Metz, that was already advancing by way of Ver- 
dun and Rheims. And the links of the iron chain that their 
enemies had forged for them had been riveted together; it en- 
compassed Paris, and now Paris was a city shut off from all the 
world, whence no letter, no word of tidings longer came, the 
huge prison-house of two millions of living beings, who were 
to their neighbors as if they were not. 

Henriette was oppressed by a sense of melancholy. “ Ah, 
merciful heaven ! ” she murmured, “ how long will all this last, 
and shall we ever see him more ! ” 

A more furious blast bent.the sturdy trees out-doors and made 
the timbers of the old farmhouse creak and groan. Think of 
the sufferings the poor fellows would have to endure should 
the winter be severe, fighting in the snow, without bread, with- 
out fire ! 

“ Bah ! ” rejoined Jean, “ that’s a very nice letter of his, and 
it’s a comfort to have heard from him. We must not despair.” 

Thus, day by day, the month of October ran its course, with 
gray melancholy skies, and if ever the wind went down for a 
short space it was only to bring the clouds back in darker, 
heavier masses. Jean’s wound was healing very slowly ; the 
outflow from the drain was not the “ laudable pus ” which 
would have permitted the doctor to remove the appliance, 
and the patient was in a very enfeebled state, refusing, how- 
ever, to be operated on in his dread of being left a cripple. 
An atmosphere of expectant resignation, disturbed at times 
by transient misgivings for which there was no apparent cause, 
pervaded the slumberous little chamber, to which the tidings 
from abroad came in vague, indeterminate shape, like the dis- 
torted visions of an evil dream. The hateful war, with its 
butcheries and disasters, was still raging out there in the world, 
in some quarter unknown to them, without their ever being 
able to learn the real course of events, without their being 
conscious of aught save the wails and groans that seemed to 
fill the air from their mangled, bleeding country. And the 
dead leaves rustled in the paths as the wind swept them before 
it beneath the gloomy sky, and over the naked fields brooded 
a funereal silence, broken only by the cawing of the crows, 
presage of a bitter winter. 

A principal subject of conversation between them at this 
time was the hospital, which Henriette never left except to come 
and cheer Jean with her company. When she came in at 
evening he would question her, making the acquaintance of 


THE DOWNFALL. 


445 


each of her charges, desirous to know who would die and who 
recover ; while she, whose heart and soul were in her occupa- 
tion, never wearied, but related the occurrences of the day in 
their minutest details. 

“ Ah,” she would always say, “ the poor boys, the poor 
boys ! ” 

It was not the ambulance of the battlefield, where the blood 
from the wounded came in a fresh, bright stream, where the 
flesh the surgeon’s knife cut into was firm and healthy ; it was 
the decay and rottenness of the hospital, where the odor of 
fever and gangrene hung in the air, damp with the exhalations 
of the lingering convalescents and those who were dying by 
inches. Doctor Dalichamp had had the greatest difficulty in 
procuring the necessary beds, sheets and pillows, and every day 
he had to accomplish miracles to keep his patients alive, to 
obtain for them bread, meat and desiccated vegetables, to say 
nothing of bandages, compresses and other appliances. As 
the Prussian officers in charge of the military hospital in 
Sedan had refused him everything, even chloroform, he was 
accustomed to send to Belgium for what he required. And yet 
he had made no discrimination between French and Germans; 
he was even then caring for a dozen Bavarian soldiers who 
had been brought in there from Bazeilles. Those bitter ad- 
versaries who but a short time before had been trying to cut 
each other’s throat now lay side by side, their passions calmed 
by suffering. And what abodes of distress and misery they 
were, those two long rooms in the old schoolhouse of Remil ly, 
where, in the crude light that streamed through the tall win- 
dows, some thirty beds in each were arranged on either side 
of a narrow passage. 

As late even as ten days after the battle wounded men had 
been discovered in obscure corners, where they had been over- 
looked, and brought in for treatment. There were four who 
had crawled into a vacant house at Balan and remained there, 
without attendance, kept from starving in some way, no one 
could tell how, probably by the charity of some kind-hearted 
neighbor, and their wounds were alive with maggots; they were 
as dead men, their system poisoned by the corruption that ex- 
uded from their wounds. There was a purulency, that noth- 
ing could check or overcome, that hovered over the rows of 
beds and emptied them. As soon as the door was passed one’s 
nostrils were assailed by the odor of mortifying flesh. From 
drains inserted in festering sores fetid matter trickled, drop by 


TilE DOWNFALL, 


446 

drop. Oftentimes it became necessary to reopen old wounds 
in order to extract a fragment of bone that had been over- 
looked. Then abscesses would form, to break out after an in- 
terval in some remote portion of the body. Their strength all 
gone, reduced to skeletons, with ashen, clayey faces, the mis- 
erable wretches suffered the torments of the damned. Some, 
so weakened they could scarcely draw their breath, lay all 
day long upon their back, with tight shut, darkened eyes, like 
corpses in which decomposition had already set in; while oth- 
ers, denied the boon of sleep, tossing in restless wakefulness, 
drenched with the cold sweat that streamed from every pore, 
raved like lunatics, as if their suffering had made them mad. 
And whether they were calm or violent, it mattered not ; when 
the contagion of the fever reached them, then was the end at 
hand, the poison doing its work, flying from bed to bed, sweep- 
ing them all away in one mass of corruption. 

But worst of all was the condemned cell, the room to which 
were assigned those who were attacked by dysentery, typhus or 
small-pox. There were many cases of black small-pox. The 
patients writhed and shrieked in unceasing delirium, or sat 
erect in bed with the look of specters. Others had pneumonia 
and were wasting beneath the stress of their frightful cough. 
There were others again who maintained a continuous howling 
and were comforted only when their burning, throbbing wound 
was sprayed with cold water. The great hour of the day, the 
one that was looked forward to with eager expectancy, was 
that of the doctor’s morning visit, when the beds were opened 
and aired and an opportunity was afforded their occupants to 
stretch their limbs, cramped by remaining long in one position. 
And it was the hour of dread and terror as well, for not a day 
passed that, as the doctor went his rounds, he was not pained 
to see on some poor devil’s skin the bluish spots that denoted 
the presence of gangrene. The operation would be appointed 
for the following day, when a few more inches of the leg or 
arm would be sliced away. Often the gangrene kept mount- 
ing higher and higher, and amputation had to be repeated 
until the entire limb was gone. 

Every evening on her return Henriette answered Jean’s 
questions in the same tone of compassion : 

“ Ah, the poor boys, the poor boys ! ” 

And her particulars never varied ; they were the story of 
the daily recurring torments of that earthly hell. There had 
been an amputation at the shoulder-joint, a foot had been 


THE DOWNFALL. 


447 


taken off, a humerus resected ; but would gangrene or puru- 
lent contagion be clement and spare the patient ? Or else 
they had been burying some one of their inmates, most fre- 
quently a Frenchman, now and then a German. Scarcely a day 
passed but a coarse coffin, hastily knocked together from four 
pine boards, left the hospital at the twilight hour, accompanied 
by a single one of the attendants, often by the young woman her- 
self, that a fellow-creature might not be laid away in his grave 
like a dog. In the little cemetery at Remilly two trenches 
had been dug, and there they slumbered, side by side, French 
to the right, Germans to the left, their enmity forgotten in 
their narrow bed. 

Jean, without ever having seen them, had come to feel an 
interest in certain among the patients. He would ask for 
tidings of them. 

“ And ‘ Poor boy,’ how is he getting on to-day ?” 

This was a little soldier, a private in the 5th. of the line, not 
yet twenty years old, who had doubtless enlisted as a volun- 
teer. The by-name : “ Poor boy ” had been given him and 
had stuck because he always used the words in speaking of 
himself, and when one day he was asked the reason he replied 
that that was the name by which his mother had always called, 
him. Poor boy he was, in truth, for he was dying of pleurisy 
brought on by a wound in his left side. 

“ Ah, poor fellow,” replied Plenriette, who had conceived a 
special fondness for this one of her charges, “ he is no better ; 
he coughed all the afternoon. It pained my heart to hear 
him.” 

“And your bear, Gutman, how about him?” pursued Jean, 
with a faint smile. “ Is the doctor’s report more favorable ? ” 

“ Yes, he thinks he may be able to save his life. But the 
poor man suffers dreadfully.” 

Although they both felt the deepest compassion for him, 
they never spoke of Gutman but a smile of gentle amusement 
came to their lips. Almost immediately upon entering on her 
duties at the hospital the young woman had been shocked to 
recognize in that Bavarian soldier the features : big blue 
eyes, red hair and beard and massive nose, of the man who 
had carried her away in his arms the day they shot her hus- 
band at Bazeilles. He recognized her as well, but could not 
speak ; a musket ball, entering at the back of the neck, had 
carried away half his tongue. For two days she recoiled with 
horror, an involuntary shudder passed through her frame, 


448 


THE DOWNFALL. 


each time she had to approach his bed, but presently her 
heart began to melt under the imploring, very gentle looks 
with which he followed her movements in the room. Was he 
not the blood-splashed monster, with eyes ablaze with furious 
rage, whose memory was ever present to her mind ? It cost 
her an effort to recognize him now in that submissive, uncom- 
plaining creature, who bore his terrible suffering with such 
cheerful resignation. The nature of his affliction, which is 
not of frequent occurrence, enlisted for him the sympathies of 
the entire hospital. It was not even certain that his name 
was Gutman ; he was called so because the only sound he 
succeeded in articulating was a word of two syllables that re- 
sembled that more than it did anything else. As regarded all 
other particulars concerning him everyone was in the dark ; 
it was generally believed, however, that he was married and 
had children. He seemed to understand a few words of 
French, for he would answer questions that were put to him 
with an emphatic motion of the head : “ Married ? ” yes, yes ! 
“ Children ? ” yes, yes ! The interest and excitement he dis- 
played one day that he saw some flour induced them to 
believe he might have been a miller. And that was all. 
Where was the mill, whose wheel had ceased to turn ? In 
what distant Bavarian village were the wife and children now 
weeping their lost husband and father? Was he to die, name- 
less, unknown, in that foreign country, and leave his dear ones 
forever ignorant of his fate ? 

“To-day,” Henriette told Jean one evening, “Gutman 
kissed his hand to me. I cannot give him a drink of water, 
or render him any other trifling service, but he manifests his 
gratitude by the most extravagant demonstrations. Don’t 
smile ; it is too terrible to be buried thus alive before one’s 
time iias come.” 

Toward the end of October Jean’s condition began to im- 
prove. The doctor thought he might venture to remove the 
drain, although he still looked apprehensive whenever he 
examined the wound, which nevertheless appeared to be heal- 
ing as rapidly as could be expected. The convalescent was 
able to leave his bed, and spent hours at a time pacing his 
room or .seated at the window, looking out on the cheerless, 
leaden sky. Then time began to hang heavy on his hands ; 
he spoke of finding something to do, asked if he could not be 
of service on the .farm. Among the secret cares that dis- 
fqr|)ed his mipd w^s the questioq of mone^, for he dic| not 


THE DOWNFALL. 


449 


suppose he could have lain there for six long weeks and not 
exhaust his little fortune of two hundred francs, and if Father 
Fouchard continued to afford him hospitality it must be that 
Henriette had been paying his board. The thought dis- 
tressed him greatly ; he did not know how to bring about an 
explanation with her, and it was with a feeling of deep satis- 
faction that he accepted the position of assistant at the farm, 
with the understanding that he was to help Silvine with the 
housework, while Prosper was to be continued in charge of 
the out-door labors. 

Notwithstanding the hardness of the times Father Fouchard 
could well afford to take on another hand, for his affairs were 
prospering. While the whole country was in the throes of dis- 
solution and bleeding at every limb, he had succeeded in so 
extending his butchering business that he was now slaughter- 
ing three and even four times as many animals as he had ever 
done before. It was said that since the 31st of August he 
had been carrying on a most lucrative* business with the 
Prussians. He who on the 30th had stood at his door with 
his cocked gun in his hand and refused to sell a crust of bread 
to the starving soldiers of the 7th corps had on the following 
day, upon the first appearance of the enemy, opened up as 
dealer in all kinds of supplies, had disinterred from his cellar 
immense stocks of provisions, had brought back his flocks and 
herds from the fastnesses where he had concealed them; and 
since that day he had been one of the heaviest purveyors of 
meat to the German armies, exhibiting consummate address in 
bargaining with them and in getting his money promptly for 
his merchandise. Other dealers at times suffered great incon- 
venience from the insolent arbitrariness of the victors, whereas 
he never sold them a sack of flour, a cask of wine or a 
quarter of beef that he did not get his pay for it as soon as 
delivered in good hard cash. It made a good deal of talk in 
Remilly ; people said it was scandalous on the part of a man 
whom the war had deprived of his only son, whose grave he 
never visited, but left to be cared for by Silvine ; but never- 
theless they all looked up to him with respect as a man who 
was making his fortune while others, even the shrewdest, were 
having a hard time of it to keep body and soul together. And 
he, with a sly leer out of his small red eyes, would shrug his 
shoulders and growl in his bull-headed way : 

‘‘ Who talks of patriotism ! I am more a patriot than any 
pf them, Would you call it patriotism to fill those bloody 


THE DOWNFALL. 


450 

Prussians’ mouths gratis ? What they get from me they have 
to pay for. Folks will see how it is some of these days ! ” 

On the second day of his employment Jean remained too 
long on foot, and the doctor’s secret fears proved not to be 
unfounded ; the wound opened, the leg became greatly in- 
flamed and swollen, he was compelled to take to his bed again. 
Dalichamp suspected that the mischief was due to a spicule of 
bone that the two consecutive days of violent exercise had 
served to liberate. He explored the wound and was so fortun- 
ate as to find the fragment, but there was a shock attending 
the operation, succeeded by a high fever, which exhausted all 
Jean’s strength. He had never in his life been reduced to a 
condition of such debility : his recovery promised to be a work 
of time, and faithful Henriette resumed her position as nurse 
and companion in the little chamber, where winter with icy 
breath now began to make its presence felt. It was early 
November, already the east wind had brought on its wings a 
smart flurry of snow, and between those four bare walls, on the 
uncarpeted floor where even the tall, gaunt old clothes-press 
seemed to shiver with discomfort, the cold was extreme. As 
there was no fireplace in the room they determined to set up 
a stove, of which the purring, droning murmur assisted to 
brighten their solitude a bit. 

The days wore on, monotonously, and that first week of the 
relapse was to Jean and Henriette the dreariest and saddest in 
all their long, unsought intimacy. Would their suffering never 
end } were they to hope for no surcease of misery, the danger 
always springing up afresh ? At every moment their thoughts 
sped away to Maurice, from whom they had received no fur- 
ther word. They were told that others were getting letters, 
brief notes written on tissue paper and brought in by carrier- 
pigeons. Doubtless the bullet of some hated German had 
slain the messenger that, winging its way through the free air 
of heaven, was bringing them their missive of joy and love. 
Everything seemed to retire into dim obscurity, ^to die and be 
swallowed up in the depths of the premature winter. Intelli- 
gence of the war only reached them a long time after the oc- 
currence of events, the few newspapers that Doctor Dalichamp 
still continued to supply them with were often a week old by 
the time they reached their hands. And their dejection was 
largely owing to their want of information, to what they did 
not know and yet instinctively felt to be the truth, to the pro- 
longed death-wail that, spite of all, came to their ears across 


THE DOWNFALL. 


451 


the frozen fields in the deep silence that lay upon the 
country. 

One morning the doctor came to them in a condition of 
deepest discouragement. With a trembling hand he drew 
from his pocket a Belgian newspaper and threw it on the bed, 
exclaiming : 

“ Alas, my friends, poor France is murdered ; Bazaine has 
played the traitor ! ” 

Jean, who had been dozing, his back supported by a couple 
of pillows, suddenly became wide-awake. 

“ What, a traitor ? ” 

“Yes, he has surrendered Metz and the army. It is the ex- 
perience of Sedan over again, only this time they drain us of 
our last drop of life-blood.” Then taking up the paper and 
reading from it : “ One hundred and fifty thousand prisoners, 
one hundred and fifty-three eagles and standards, one hundred 
and forty-one field guns, seventy-six machine guns, eight 
hundred casemate and barbette guns, three hundred thousand 
muskets, two thousand military train wagons, material for 
eighty-five batteries ” 

And he went on giving further particulars : how Marshal 
Bazaine had been blockaded in Metz with the army* bound 
hand and foot, making no effort to break the wall of 
adamant that surrounded him ; the doubtful relations that ex- 
isted between him and Prince Frederick Charles, his indecision 
and fluctuating political combinations, his ambition to play a 
great role in history, but a role that he seemed not to have 
fixed upon himself ; then all the dirty business of parleys and 
conferences, and the communications by means of lying, un- 
savory emissaries with Bismarck, King William and the Em- 
press-regent, who in the end put her foot down and refused 
to negotiate with the enemy on the basis of a cession of terri- 
tory ; and, finally, the inevitable catastrophe, the completion 
of the web that destiny had been weaving, famine in Metz, a 
compulsory capitulation, officers and men, hope and courage 
gone, reduced to accept the bitter terms of the victor. France 
no longer had an army. 

“ In God’s name ! ” Jean ejaculated in a deep, dow voice. 
He had not fully understood it all, but until then Bazaine had 
always been for him the great captain, the one man to whom 
they were to look for salvation. “ What is left us to do now ? 
What will become of them at Paris ? ” 

The doctor was just coming to the news from Paris, which 


452 


THE DOWNFALL. 


was of a disastrous character. He called their attention to 
the fact that the paper from which he was reading was dated 
November 5. The surrender of Metz had been consum- 
mated on the 27th of October, and the tidings were not known 
in Paris until the 30th. Coming, as it did, upon the heels of 
the reverses recently sustained at Chevilly, Bagneux and la 
Malmaison, after the conflict at Bourget and the loss of that 
position, the intelligence had burst like a thunderbolt over the 
desperate populace, angered and disgusted by the feebleness 
and impotency of the government of National Defense. And 
thus it was that on the following day, the 31st, the city was 
threatened with a general insurrection, an immense throng of 
angry men, a mob ripe for mischief, collecting on the Place de 
THotel de Ville, whence they swarmed into the halls and pub- 
lic offices, making prisoners the members of the Government, 
whom the National Guard rescued later in the day only because 
they feared the triumph of those incendiaries who were clamor- 
ing for the commune. And the Belgian journal wound up with 
a few stinging comments on the great City of Paris, thus torn 
by civil war when the enemy was at its gates. Was it not the 
presage of approaching decomposition, the puddle of blood 
and mire that was to engulf a world ? 

“ That’s true enough ! ” said Jean, whose face was very 
white. “ They’ve no business to be squabbling when the 
Prussians are at hand ! ” 

But Henriette, who had said nothing as yet, always making 
it her rule to hold her tongue when politics were under dis- 
cussion, could not restrain a cry that rose from her heart. 
Her thoughts were ever with her brother. 

Mon JTieii, I hope that Maurice, with all the foolish ideas 
he has in his head, won’t let himself get mixed up in this 
business ! ” 

They were all silent in their distress ; and it was the doctor, 
who was ardently patriotic, who resumed the conversation. 

“ Never mind ; if there are no more soldiers, others will 
grow. Metz has surrendered, Paris may surrender, even ; but 
it don’t follow from that that France is wiped out. Yes, the 
strong-box is all right, as our peasants say, and we will live on 
in spite of all.” 

It was clear, however, that he was hoping against hope. 
He spoke of the army that was collecting on the Loire, whose 
initial performances, in the neighborhood of Arthenay, had 
not been of the most promising ; it would become seasoned 


THE DOWNFALL. 


453 


and would march to the relief of Paris. His enthusiasm was 
aroused to boiling pitch by the proclamations of Gambetta, 
who had left Paris by balloon on the 7th of October and two 
days later established his headquarters at Tours, calling on 
every citizen to fly to arms, and instinct with a spirit at once 
so virile and so sagacious that the entire country gave its ad- 
hesion to the dictatorial powers assumed for the public safety. 
And was there not talk of forming another army in the North, 
and yet another in the East, of causing soldiers to spring from 
the ground by sheer force of faith ? It was to be the awaken- 
ing of the provinces, the creation of all that was wanting by 
exercise of indomitable will, the determination to continue the 
struggle until the last sou was spent, the last drop of blood 
shed. 

“ Bah ! ” said the doctor in conclusion as he arose to go, 
“ I have many a time given up a patient, and a week later 
found him as lively as a cricket.” 

Jean smiled. “ Doctor, hurry up and make a well man of 
me, so I can go back to my post down yonder.” 

But those evil tidings left Henriette and him in a terribly 
disheartened state. There came another cold wave, with 
snow, and when the next day Henriette caihe in shivering from 
the hospital she told her friend that Gutman was dead. The 
intense cold had proved fatal to many among the wounded ; 
it was emptying the rows of beds. The miserable man whom 
the loss of his tongue had condemned to silence had lain two 
days in the throes of death. During his last hour she had 
remained seated at his bedside, unable to resist the supplica- 
tion of his pleading gaze. He seemed to be speaking to her 
with his tearful eyes, trying to tell, it may be, his real name 
and the name of the village, so far away, where a wife and 
little ones were watching for his return. And he had gone 
from them a stranger, known of none, sending her a last kiss 
with his uncertain, stiffening fingers, as if to thank her once 
again for all her gentle care. She was the only one who ac- 
companied the remains to the cemetery, where the frozen 
earth, the unfriendly soil of the stranger’s country, rattled 
with a dull, hollow sound oh the pine coffin, mingled with 
flakes of snow. 

The next day, again, Henriette said upon her return at 
evening : 

“ ‘ Poor boy ’ is dead.” She could not keep back her tears 
at mention of his name. “ If you could but have seen and 


454 


THE DOWNFALL. 


heard him in his pitiful delirium ! He kept calling me : 

‘ Mamma ! mamma ! ’ and stretched his poor thin arms out to 
me so entreatingly that I had to take him on my lap. His 
suffering had so wasted him that he was no heavier than a 
boy of ten, poor fellow. And I held and soothed him, so that 
he might die in peace ; yes, I held him in my arms, I whom 
he called his mother and who was but a few years older than 
himself. He wept, and 1 myself could not restrain my tears ; 

you can see I am weeping still ” Her utterance was choked 

with sobs ; she had to pause. “ Before his death he murmured 
several times the name which he had given himself : ‘ Poor boy, 
poor boy !’ Ah, how just the designation ! poor boys they 
are indeed, some of them so young and all so brave, whom 
your hateful war maims and mangles and causes to suffer so 
before they are laid away at last in their narrow bed ! ” 

Never a day passed now but Henriette came in at night in 
this anguished state, caused by some new death, and the suf- 
fering of others had the effect of bringing them together even 
more closely still during the sorrowful hours that they spent, 
secluded from all the world, in the silent, tranquil chamber. 
And yet those hours were full of sweetness, too, for affection, 
a feeling which they believed to be a brother’s and sister’s love, 
had sprung up in those two hearts which little by little had 
come to know each other’s worth. To him, with his observant, 
thoughtful nature, their long intimacy had proved an elevating 
influence, while she, noting his unfailing kindness of heart 
and evenness of temper, had ceased to remember that he was 
one of the lowly of the earth and had been a tiller of the soil 
before he became a soldier. Their understanding was perfect ; 
they made a very good couple, as Silvine said with her grave 
smile. There was never the least embarrassment between 
them ; when she dressed his leg the calm serenity that dwelt 
in the eyes of both was undisturbed. Always attired in black, 
in her widow’s garments, it seemed almost as if she had ceased 
to be a woman. 

But during those long afternoons when Jean was left to 
himself he could not help giving way to speculation. The 
sentiment he experienced for his friend was one of boundless 
gratitude, a sort of religious reverence, which would have 
made hini repel the idea of love as if it were a sort of sacrilege. 
And yet he told himself that had he had a wife like her, so 
gentle, so loving, so helpful, his life would have been an earthly 
paradise. His great misfortune, his unhappy marriage, the 


THE DOWNFALL. 


455 


evil years be had spent at Rognes, his wife’s tragic end, all 
the sad past, arose before him with a softened feeling of 
regret, with an undefined hope for the future, but without dis- 
tinct purpose to try another eifort to master happiness. He 
closed his eyes and dropped off into a doze, and then he had 
a-confused vision of being at Remilly, married again and owner 
of a bit of land, sufficient to support a family of honest folks 
whose wants were not extravagant. But it was all a dream, 
lighter than thistle-down ; he knew it could never, never be. 
He believed his heart to be capable of no emotion stronger 
than friendship, he loved Henriette as he did solely because 
he was Maurice’s brother. And then that vague dream of 
marriage had come to be in some measure a comfort to him, 
one of those fancies of the imagination that we know is never 
to be realized and with which we fondle ourselves in our hours 
of melancholy. 

For her part, such thoughts had never for a moment pre- 
sented themselves to Henriette’s mind. Since the day of the 
horrible tragedy at Bazeilles her bruised heart had lain numb and 
lifeless in her bosom, and if consolation in the shape of a 
new affection had found its way thither, it could not be other- 
wise than without her knowledge ; the latent movement of the 
seed deep-buried in the earth, which bursts its sheath and ger- 
minates, unseen of human eye. She failed even to perceive 
the pleasure it afforded her to remain for hours at a time by 
Jean’s bedside, reading to him those newspapers that never 
brought them tidings save of evil. Never had her pulses beat 
more rapidly at the touch of his hand, never had she dwelt in 
dreamy rapture on the vision of the future with a longing to be 
loved once more. And yet it was in that chamber alone that 
she found comfort and oblivion. When she was there, busy- 
ing herself with noiseless diligence for her patient’s well-being, 
she was at peace ; it seemed to her that soon her brother would 
return and all would be well, they would all lead a life of hap- 
piness together and never more be parted. And it appeared 
to her so natural that things should end thus that she talked 
of their relations without the slightest feeling of embarrass- 
ment, without once thinking to question her heart more closely, 
unaware that she had already made the chaste surrender of it. 

But as slie was on the point of leaving for the hospital one af- 
ternoon she looked into the kitchen as she passed and saw there 
a Prussian captain and two other officers, and the icy terror 
that filled her at the sight, then, for the first time, opened her 


456 


THE DOWNFALL. 


eyes to the deep affection she had conceived for Jean. It was 
plain that the men had heard of the wounded man’s presence 
at the farm and were come to claim him ; he was to be torn 
from them and led away captive to the dungeon of some dark 
fortress deep in Germany. She listened tremblingly, her heart 
beating tumultuously. 

The captain, a big, stout man, who spoke French with scarce 
a trace of foreign accent, was rating old Fouchard soundly. 

“ Things can’t go on in this way ; you are not dealing 
squarely by us. I came myself to give you warning, once for 
all, that if the thing happens again 1 shall take other steps to 
remedy it ; and I promise you the consequences will not be 
agreeable.” 

Though entirely master of all his faculties the old scamp as- 
sumed an air of consternation, pretending not to understand, 
his mouth agape, his arms describing frantic circles on the 
air. 

“ How is that, sir, how is that ? ” 

“ Oh, come, there’s no use attempting to pull the wool over 
my eyes ; you know perfectly well that the three beeves you 
sold me on Sunday last were rotten — yes, diseased, and rotten 
through and through ; they must have been where there was 
infection, for they poisoned my men ; there are two of them 
in such a bad way that they may be dead by this time for all I 
know.” 

Fouchard’s manner was expressive of virtuous indignation. 
“What, my cattle diseased ! why, there’s no better meat in all 
the country ; a sick woman might feed on it to build her up ! ” 
And he whined and sniveled, thumping himself on the chest 
and calling God to witness he was an honest man ; he would 
cut off his right hand rather than sell bad meat. For more 
than thirty years he had been known throughout the neighbor- 
hood, and not a living soul could say he had ever been wronged 
in weight or quality. “ They were as sound as a dollar, sir, 
and if your men had the belly-ache it was because they ate 
too much — unless some villain hocussed the pot ” 

And so he ran on, with such a flux of words and absurd 
theories that finally the captain, his patience exhausted, cut 
him short. 

“ Enough ! You have had your warning ; see you profit by 
it ! And there is another matter : we have our suspicions that 
all you people of this village give aid and comfort to the 
francs-tireurs of the wood of Dieulet, who killed another of 


THE DOWNFALL. 457 

our sentries day before yesterday. Mind what I say ; be 
careful ! ” 

When the Prussians were gone Father Fouchard shrugged 
his shoulders with a contemptuous sneer. Why, yes, of course 
he sold them carcasses that had never been near the slaughter- 
house ; that was all they would ever get to eat from him. If 
a peasant had a cow die on his hands of the rinderpest, or if 
he found a dead ox lying in the ditch, was not the carrion 
good enough for those dirty Prussians ? To say nothing of 
the pleasure there was in getting a big price out of them for 
tainted meat at which a dog would turn up his nose. He 
turned and winked slyly at Henriette, who was glad to have 
her fears dispelled, muttering triumphantly : 

“ Say, little girl, what do you think now of the wicked 
people who go about circulating the story that I am not a 
patriot ? Why don’t they do as I do, eh ? sell the black- 
guards carrion and put their money in their pocket. Not a 
patriot ! why, good Heavens ! I shall have killed more of them 
with my diseased cattle than many a soldier with his chasse- 
pot ! ” 

When the story reached Jean’s ears, however, he was greatly 
disturbed. If the German authorities suspected that the 
people of Remilly were harboring the francs-tireurs from Dieu- 
let wood they might at any time come and beat up his quarters 
and unearth him from his retreat. The idea that he should 
be the means of compjomising his hosts or bringing trouble to 
Henriette was unendurable to him. Yielding to the young 
woman’s entreaties, however, he consented to delay his de- 
parture yet for a few days, for his wound was very slow in 
healing and he was not strong enough to go away and join 
one of the regiments in the field, either in the North or on the 
Loire. 

From that time forward, up to the middle of December, the 
stress of their anxiety and mental suffering exceeded even 
what had gone before. The cold was grown to be so intense 
that the stove no longer sufficed to heat the great, barn-like 
room. When they looked from their window on the crust of 
snow that covered the frozen earth they thought of Maurice, 
entombed down yonder in distant Paris, that was now become 
a city of death and desolation, from which they scarcely ever 
received reliable intelligence. Ever the same questions were 
on their lips : what was he doing, why did he not let them 
hear from him ? They dared not voice their dreadful doubts 


45 ^ 


THE DOWNFALL, 


and fears ; perhaps he was ill, or wounded ; perhaps even he 
was dead. The scanty and vague tidings that continued to 
reach them occasionally through the newspapers were not 
calculated to reassure them. After numerous lying reports of 
successful sorties, circulated one day only to be contradicted 
the next, there was .a rumor of a great victory gained by 
General Ducrot at Champigny on the 2d of December ; but 
they speedily learned that on the following day the general, 
abandoning the positions he had won, had been forced to re- 
cross the Marne and send his troops into cantonments in the 
wood of Vincennes. With each new day the Parisians saw 
themselves subjected to fresh suffering and privation ; famine 
was beginning to make itself felt ; the authorities, having first 
requisitioned horned cattle, were now doing the same with 
potatoes, gas was no longer furnished to private houses, and 
soon the fiery flight of the projectiles could be traced as they 
tore through the darkness of the unlighted streets. And so it 
was that neither of them could draw a breath or eat a mouth- 
ful without being haunted by the image of Maurice and those 
two million living beings, imprisoned in their gigantic 
sepulcher. 

From every quarter, moreover, from the northern as well as 
from the central districts, most discouraging advices continued 
to arrive. In the north the 2 2d army corps, composed of 
gardes mobiles, depot companies from various regiments and 
such officers and men as had not been involved in the disasters 
of Sedan and Metz, had been forced to abandon Amiens and 
retreat on Arras, and on the 5th of December Rouen had also 
fallen into the hands of the enemy, after a mere pretense of 
resistance on the part of its demoralized, scanty garrison. In 
the center the victory of Coulmiers, achieved on the 3d of 
November by the army of the Loire, had resuscitated for a mo- 
ment the hopes of the country : Orleans was to be reoccupied, 
the ^Bavarians were to be put to flight, the movement by way 
of Etampes was to culminate in the relief of Paris ; but on 
December 5 Prince Frederick Charles had retaken Orleans 
and cut in two the army of the Loire, of which three corps fell 
back on Bourges and Vierzon, while the remaining two, com- 
manded by General Chanzy, retired to Mans, fighting and 
falling back alternately for a whole week, most gallantly. 
The Prussians were everywhere, at Dijon and at Dieppe, at 
Vierzon as well as at Mans. And almost every morning came 
the intelligence of some fortified place that had capitulated, 


THE DOWNFALL. 


459 


unable longer to hold out under the bombardment. Stras- 
bourg had succumbed as early as the 28th of September, after 
standing forty-six days of siege and thirty-seven of shelling, 
her walls razed and her buildings riddled by more than two 
hundred thousand projectiles. The citadel of Laon had been 
blown into the air ; Toul had surrendered ; and following 
them, a melancholy catalogue, came Soissons with its hundred 
and twenty-eight pieces of artillery, Verdun, which numbered 
a hundred and thirty-six, Neufbrisach with a hundred. La 
Fere with seventy, Montmedy, sixty-five. Thionville was in 
flames, Phalsbourg had only opened her gates after a desper- 
ate resistance that lasted eighty days. It seemed as if all 
France were doomed to burn and be reduced to ruins by the 
never-ceasing cannonade. 

One morning that Jean manifested a fixed determination to 
be gone, Henriette seized both his hands and held them tight- 
clasped in hers. 

“Ah, no ! I beg you, do not go and leave me. here alone. 
You are not strong enough ; wait a few days yet, only a few 
days. I will let you go, I promise you I will, whenever the 
doctor says you are well enough to go and fight.” 


CHAPTER V. 

T he cold was intense on that December evening. Silvine 
and Prosper, together with little Chariot, were alone in 
the great kitchen of the farmhouse, she busy with her sewing, 
he whittling away at a whip that he proposed should be more 
than usually ornate. It was seven o’clock ; they had dined at 
six, not waiting for Father Fouchard, who they supposed had 
been detained at Raucourt, where there was a scarcity of meat, 
and Henriette, whose turn it was to. watch that night at the 
hospital, had just left the house, after cautioning Silvine to 
be sure to replenish Jean’s stove with coal before she went to 
bed. 

Outside a sky of inky blackness overhung the white ex- 
panse of snow. No sound came from the village, buried 
among the drifts ; all that was to be heard in the kitchen was 
the scraping of Prosper’s knife as he fashioned elaborate 
rosettes and lozenges on the dogwood stock. Now and then 
he stopped and cast a glance at Chariot, whose flaxen head was 
nodding drowsily. When the child fell asleep at last the 


460 


THE DOWNFALL. 


silence seemed more profound than ever. The mother noise- 
lessly changed the position of the candle that the light might 
not strike the eyes of her little one ; then sitting down to her 
sewing again, she sank into a deep reverie. And Prosper, after 
a further period of hesitation, finally mustered up courage to 
disburden himself of what he wished to say. 

“ Listen, Silvine ; I have something to tell you. I have 
been watching for an opportunity to speak to you in pri- 
vate ” 

Alarmed by his preface, she raised her eyes and looked him 
in the face. 

“ This is what it is. You’ll forgive me for frightening you, 
but it is best you should be forewarned. In Remilly this 
morning, at the corner by the church, I saw Goliah ; I saw him 
as plain as I see you sitting there. Oh, no ! there can be no 
mistake ; I was not dreaming ! ” 

Her face suddenly became white as death ; all she was 
capable of uttering was a stifled moan ; 

“ My God ! my God ! ” 

Prosper went on, in words calculated to give her least alarm, 
and related what he had learned during the day by question- 
ing one person and another. No one doubted now that Goliah 
was a spy, that he had formerly come and settled in the coun- 
try with the purpose of acquainting himself with its roads, its 
resources, the most insignificant details pertaining to the life 
of its inhabitants. Men reminded one another of the time 
when he had worked for Father Fouchard on his farm and of 
his sudden disappearance ; they spoke of the places he had 
had subsequently to that over toward Beaumont and Rau- 
court. And now he was back again, holding a position of 
some sort at the military post of Sedan, its duties apparently 
not very well defined, going about from one village to another, 
denouncing this man, fining that, keeping an eye to the filling 
of the requisitions that made the peasants’ lives a burden to 
them. That very morning he had frightened the people of 
Remilly almost out of their wits in relation to a delivery of 
flour, alleging it was short in weight and had not been fur- 
nished within the specified time. 

“ You are forewarned,” said Prosper in conclusion, “ and now 
you’ll know what to do when he shows his face here ” 

She interrupted him with a terrified cry. 

“ Do you think he will come here ? ” 

JDame ! it appears to me extremely probable he will. It 


THE DOWNFALL. 


46 


would show great lack of curiosity if he didn’t, since he knows 
he has a young one here that he has never seen. And then 
there’s you, besides, and you’re not so very homely but he 
might like to have another look at you.” 

She gave him an entreating glance that silenced his rude 
attempt at gallantry. Chariot, awakened by the sound of their 
voices, had raised his head. With the blinking eyes of one 
suddenly aroused from slumber he looked about the room, and 
recalled the words that some idle fellow of the village had 
taught him ; and with the solemn gravity of a little man of 
three he announced : 

“ Dey’re loafers, de Prussians !” 

His mother went and caught him frantically in her arms and 
seated him on her lap. Ah ! the poor little waif, at once her 
delight and her despair, whom she loved with all her soul and 
who brought the tears to her eyes every time she looked on 
him, flesh of her flesh, whom it wrung her heart to hear the 
urchins with whom he consorted in the street tauntingly call 
“ the little Prussian !” She kissed him, as if she would have 
forced the words back into his mouth. 

“Who taught my darling such naughty words? It’s not 
nice ; you must not say them again, my loved one.” 

Whereon Chariot, with the persistency of childhood, laugh- 
ing and squirming, made haste to reiterate : 

“ Dey’re dirty loafer.s, de Prussians ! ” 

And when his mother burst into tears he clung about her 
neck and also began to howl dismally. Dieii, what new 

evil was in store for her ! Was it not enough that she had 
lost in Honore the one single hope of her life, the assured 
promise of oblivion and future happiness ? and was that man 
to appear upon the scene again to make her misery complete ? 

“ Come,” she murmured, “ come along, darling, and go to 
bed. Mamma will kiss her little boy all the same, for he does 
not know the sorrow he causes her.” 

And she went from the room, leaving Prosper alone. The 
good fellow, not to add to her embarrassment, had averted 
his eyes from her face and was apparently devoting his entire 
attention to his carving. 

Before putting Chariot to bed it was Silvine’s nightly custom 
to take him in to say good-night to Jean, with whom the 
youngster was on terms of great friendship. As she entered 
the room that evening, holding her candle before her, she 
beheld the convalescent seated upright in bed, his open eyes 


462 


THE DOWNFALL. 


peering into the obscurity. What, was he not asleep ? Faith, 
no ; he had been ruminating on all sorts of subjects in the 
silence of the winter night ; and while she was cramming the 
stove Vv^ith coal he frolicked for a moment with Chariot, who 
rolled and tumbled on the bed like a young kitten. He know 
Silvine’s story, and had a very kindly feeling for the meek, 
courageous girl whom misfortune had tried so sorely, mourn- 
ing the only man she had ever loved, her sole comfort that 
child of shame whose existence was a daily reproach to her. 
When she had replaced the lid on the stove, therefore, and 
came to the bedside to take the boy from his arms, he perceived 
by her red eyes that she had been weeping. What, had she 
been having more trouble? But she would not answer his 
question : some other day she would tell him what it was if 
it seemed worth the while. Mon Dieu / was not her life one 
of continual suffering now ? 

Silvine was at last lugging Chariot away in her arms when 
there arose from the courtyard of the farm a confused sound 
of steps and voices. Jean listened in astonishment. 

“ What is it ? It can’t be Father Fouchard returning, for I 
did not hear his wagon wheels.” Lying on his back in his 
silent chamber, with nothing to occupy his mind, he had 
become acquainted with every detail of the routine of home 
life on the farm, of which the sounds were all familiar to his 
ears. Presently he added : “Ah, I see ; it is those men again, 
the francs-tireurs from Dieulet, after something to eat.” 

“ Quick, I must be gone ! ” said Silvine, hurrying from the 
room and leaving him again in darkness. “ I must make 
haste and see they get their loaves.” 

A loud knocking was heard at the kitchen door and Prosper, 
who was beginning to tire of his solitude, was holding a hesi- 
tating parley with the visitors. He did not like to admit 
strangers when the master was away, fearing he might be held 
responsible for any damage that might ensue. His good luck 
befriended him in this instance, however, for just then Father 
Fouchard’s carriole came lumbering up the acclivity, the 
tramp of the horse’s feet resounding faintly on the snow that 
covered the road. It was the old man who welcomed the new- 
comers. 

“ Ah, good ! it’s you fellows. What have you on that wheel- 
barrow ? ’* 

Sambuc, lean and hungry as a robber and wrapped in the 
folds of a blue woolen blouse many times too large for him, 


THE DOWNFALL. 


463 


did not even hear the farmer ; he was storming angrily at 
Prosper, his honest brother, as he called him, who had only 
then made up his mind to unbar the door. 

“ Say, you ! do you take us for beggars that you leave us 
standing in the cold in weather such as this ? ” 

But Prosper did not trouble himself to make any other 
reply than was expressed in a contemptuous shrug of the 
shoulders, and while he was leading the horse off to the stable 
old Fouchard, bending over the wheelbarrow, again spoke up. 

“ So, it’s two dead sheep you’ve brought me. It’s lucky 
it’s freezing weather, otherwise we should know what they are 
by the smell.” 

Cabasse and Ducat, Sambuc’s two trusty henchmen, who 
accompanied him in all his expeditions, raised their voices in 
protest. 

“ Oh ! ” cried the first^ with his loud-mouthed Proven9al 
volubility, “ they’ve only been dead three days. They’re 
some of the animals that died on the Raffins farm, where the 
disease has been putting in its fine work of late.”- 

“ Procuinhit humi bos," spouted the other, the ex-court 
officer whose excessive predilection for the ladies had got him 
into difficulties, and who was fond of airing his Latin on 
occasion. 

Father Fouchard shook his head and continued to dis- 
parage their merchandise, declaring it was too “ high.” 
Finally he took the three men into the kitchen, where he con- 
cluded the business by saying : 

“After all, they’ll have to take it and make the best of it. 
It comes just in season, for there’s not a cutlet left in Rau- 
court. When a man’s hungry he’ll eat anything, won’t he?” 
And very well pleased at heart, he called to Silvine, who just 
then came in from putting Chariot to bed : “ Let’s have some 
glasses ; we are going to drink to the downfall of old 
Bismarck.” 

Fouchard maintained amicable relations with these francs- 
tireurs from Dieulet wood, who for some three months past 
had been emerging at nightfall from the fastnesses where they 
made their lurking place, killing and robbing a Prussian 
whenever they could steal upon him unawares, descending on 
the farms and plundering the peasants when there was a 
scarcity of the other kind of game. They were the terror of 
all the villages in the vicinity, and the more so that every time 
a provision train was attacked or a sentry murdered the 


464 


THE DOWNFALL 


German authorities avenged themselves on the adjacent 
hamlets, the inhabitants of which they accused of abetting the 
outrages, inflicting heavy penalties on them, carrying off their 
mayors as prisoners, burning their poor hovels. Nothing 
would have pleased the peasants more than to deliver Sam- 
buc and his band to the enemy, and they were only deterred 
from doing so by their fear of being shot in the back at 
a turn in the road some night should their attempt fail of 
success. 

It had occurred to Fouchard to inaugurate a traffic with 
them. Roaming about the country in every direction, peer- 
ing with their sharp eyes into ditches and cattle sheds, they 
had become his purveyors of dead animals. Never an ox or a 
sheep within a radius of three leagues was stricken down by 
disease but they came by night with their barrow and wheeled 
it away to him, and he paid them in provisions, most 
generally in bread, that Silvine baked in great batches 
expressly for the purpose. Besides, if he had no great love 
for them, he experienced a secret feeling of admiration for 
the francs-tireurs, a set of handy rascals who went their way 
and snapped their fingers at the world, and although he was 
making a fortune from his dealings with the Prussians, he 
could never refrain from chuckling to himself with grim, 
savage laughter as often as he heard that one of them had 
been found lying at the roadside with his throat cut. 

“Your good health!” said he, touching glasses with the 
three men. Then, wiping his mouth with the back of his 
hand : Say, have you heard of the fuss they’re making over 
the two headless uhlans that they picked up over there near 
Villecourt ? Villecourt was burned yesterday, you know ; 
they say it was the penalty the village had to pay for harbor- 
ing you. You’ll have to be prudent, don’t you see, and not 
show yourselves about here for a time. I’ll see the bread is 
sent you somewhere.” 

Sambuc shrugged his shoulders and laughed contemptu- 
ously. What did he care for the Prussians, the dirty cowards! 
And all at once he exploded in a fit of anger, pounding the 
table with his fist. 

“ Tonnerre de Dieu ! I don’t mind the uhlans so much ; 
they’re not so bad, but it’s the other one I’d like to get a 
chance at once — you know whom I mean, the other fellow, the 
spy, the man who used to work for you.” 

“ Goliah ? ” said Father Foucliard. 


THE DOWNFALL. 465 

Silvine, who had resumed her sewing, dropped it in her lap 
and listened with intense interest. 

“ That’s his name, Goliah ! Ah, the brigand ! he is as 
familiar with every inch of the wood of Dieulet as I am with 
my pocket, and he’s like enough to get us pinched some fine 
morning. I heard of him to-day at the Maltese Cross making 
his boast that he would settle our business for us before we’re 
a week older. A dirty hound, he is, and he served as guide 
to the Prussians the day before the battle of Beaumont ; I 
leave it to these fellows if he didn’t.” 

“ It’s as true as there’s a candle standing on that table ! ” 
attested Cabasse. 

silentia arnica lunce^" added Ducat, whose quotations 
were not always conspicuous for their appositeness. 

But Sambuc again brought his heavy fist down upon the 
table. “ He has been tried and adjudged guilty, the scoundrel! 
If ever you hear of his being in the neighborhood just send 
me word, and his head shall go and keep company with the 
heads of the two uhlans in the Meuse ; yes, by G-d ! I 
pledge you my word it shall;” 

There was silence. Silvine was very white, and gazed at 
the men with unwinking, staring eyes. 

“ Those are things best not be talked too much about,” old 
Fouchard prudently declared. “ Your health, and good-night 
to you.” 

They emptied the second bottle, and Prosper, who had re- 
turned from the stable, lent a hand to load upon the wheelbarrow, 
whence the dead sheep had been removed, the loaves that 
Silvine had placed in an old grain-sack. But he turned his 
back and made no reply when his brother and the other two 
men, wheeling the barrow before them through the snow, 
stalked away and were lost to sight in the darkness, repeat- 
ing : 

“ Good-night, good-night ! an plaisir ! ” 

They had breakfasted the following morning, and Father 
Fouchard was alone in the kitchen when the door was thrown 
open and Goliah in the flesh entered the room, big and burly, 
with the ruddy hue of health on his face and his tranquil 
smile. If the old man experienced anything in the nature of 
a shock at the suddenness of the apparition he let no evidence 
of it escape him. He peered at the other through his half- 
closed lids while he came forward and shook his former em- 
ployer warmly by the hand. 


466 


THE DOWNFALL. 


“ How are you, Father Fouchard ? ” 

Then only the old peasant seemed to recognize him. 

“ Hallo, my boy, is it you? You’ve been filling out ; how 
fat you are ! ” 

And he eyed him from head to foot as he stood there, clad 
in a sort of soldier’s greatcoat of coarse blue cloth, with a cap 
of the same material, wearing a comfortable, prosperous air of 
self-content. His speech betrayed no foreign accent, more- 
over ; he spoke with the slow, thick utterance of the peasants 
of the district. 

‘‘Yes, Father Fouchard, it’s I in person. I didn’t like to 
be in the neighborhood without dropping in just to say how- 
do-you-do to you.” 

The old man could not rid himself of a feeling of distrust. 
What was the fellow after, anyway ? Could he have heard of 
the francs-tireurs’ visit to the farmhouse the night before ? 
That was something he must try to ascertain. First of all, 
however, it would be best to treat him politely, as he seemed 
to have come there in a friendly spirit. 

“ Well, my lad, since you are so pleasant we’ll have a glass 
together for old times’ sake.” 

He went himself and got a bottle and two glasses. Such 
expenditure of wine went to his heart, but one must know how 
to be liberal when he has business on hand. The scene of the 
preceding night was repeated, they touched glasses with the 
same words, the same gestures. 

“ Here’s to your good health. Father Fouchard.” 

“ And here’s to yours, my lad.” 

Then Goliah unbent and his face assumed an expression of 
satisfaction ; he looked about him like a man pleased with the 
sight of objects that recalled bygone times. He did not speak 
of the past, however, nor, for the matter of that, did he speak 
of the present. The conversation ran on the extremely cold 
weather, which would interfere with farming operations ; there 
was one good thing to be said for the snow, however : it would 
kill off the insects. He barely alluded, with a slightly pained 
expression, to the partially concealed hatred, the affright and 
scorn, with which he had been received in the other houses of 
Remilly. Every man owes allegiance to his country, doesn’t 
he.'* It is quite clear he should serve his country as well as 
he knows how. In France, however, no one looked at the 
matter in that light ; there were things about which people 
had very queer notions. And as the old man listened and 


THE -DOWNFALL. 


467 


looked at that broad, innocent, good-natured face, beaming 
with frankness and good-will, he said to himself that surely 
that excellent fellow had had no evil designs in coming there. 

“So you are all alone to-day. Father Fouchard ? ” 

“Oh, no; Silvine is out at the barn, feeding the cows. 
Wo'uld you like to see her?” 

Goliah laughed. “ Well, yes. To be quite frank with you, 
it was on Silvine’s account that I came.” 

Old Fouchard felt as if a great load had been taken off his 
mind ; he went to the door and shouted at the top of his 
voice : 

“Silvine! Silvine! There’s someone here to see you.” 

And he went away about his business without further appre- 
hension, since the lass was there to look out for the property. 
A man must be 'in a bad way, he reflected, to let a fancy for 
a girl keep such a hold on him after such a length of time, 
years and years. 

When Silvine entered the room she was not surprised to find 
herself in presence of Goliah, who remained seated and con- 
templated her with his broad smile, in which, however, there was 
a trace of embarrassment. She had been expecting him, and 
stood stock-still immediately she stepped across the doorsill, 
nerving herself and bracing all her faculties. Little Chariot 
came running up and hid among her petticoats, astonished 
and frightened to see a strange man there. Then succeeded 
a few seconds of awkward silence. 

“ And this is the little one, then ?” Goliah asked atlast in 
his most dulcet tone. 

“Yes,” was Silvine’s curt, stern answer. 

Silence again settled down upon the room. He had known 
there was a child, although he had gone away before the birth 
of his offspring, but this was the first time he had laid eyes on 
it. He therefore wished to explain matters, like a young man 
of sense who is confident he can give good reasons for his 
conduct. 

“ Come, Silvine, I know you cherish bitter feelings against 
me — and yet there is no reason why you should. If I went 
away, if I have been cause to you of so much suffering, y,ou 
might have told yourself that perhaps it was because I was not 
my own master. When a man has masters over him he must 
obey them, mustn’t he ? If they had sent me off on foot to 
make a journey of a hundred leagues I should have been 
obliged to go. And, of course, I couldn’t say a word to you 


468 


THE DOWNFALL. 


about it ; you have no idea how bad it made me feel to go 
away as I did without bidding you good-by. I won’t say to 
you now that I felt certain I should return to you some day ; 
still, I always fully expected that I should, and, as you see, 
here I am again ” 

She had turned away her head and was looking through the 
window at the snow that carpeted the courtyard, as if resolved 
to hear no word he said. Her persistent silence troubled him ; 
he interrupted his explanations to say : 

“ Do you know you are prettier than ever ! ” 

True enough, she was very beautiful in her pallor, with her 
magnificent great eyes that illuminated all her face. The heavy 
coils of raven hair that crowned her head seemed the outward 
symbol of the inward sorrow that was gnawing at her heart. 

“ Come, don’t be angry ! you know that I mean you no harm. 
If I did not love you still I should not have come back, 
that’s very certain. Now that I am here and everything is all 
right once more we shall see each other now and then, shan’t 
we ? ” 

She suddenly stepped a pace backward, and looking him 
squarely in the face : 

Never ! ” 

“ Never ! — and why ? Are you not my wife, is not that 
child ours ? ” 

She never once took her eyes from off his face, speaking 
with impressive slowness : 

“ Listen to me ; it will be better to end that matter once for 
all. You knew Honore ; 1 loved him, he was the only man 
who ever had my love. And now he is dead ; you robbed 
me of him, you murdered him over there on the battlefield, 
and never again will I be yours. Never ! ” 

She raised her hand aloft as if invoking heaven to record 
her vow, while in her voice was such depth of hatred that for 
a moment hc^ stood as if cowed, then murmured : 

“Yes, I heard that Honore was dead; he was a very nice young 
fellow. But what could you expect ? Many another has died 
as well ; it is the fortune of war. And then it seemed to me 
that once he was dead there would no longer be a barrier be- 
tween us, and let me remind you, Silvine, that after all I was 
never brutal toward you ” 

But he stopped short at sight of her agitation ; she seemed 
as if about to tear her own flesh in her horror and distress. 

Qh ! that is just it ; yes, it is that >vhich seems as if it 


THE DOWNFALL. 


469 


would drive me wild. Why, oh ! why did I yield when I never 
loved you ? Honore’s departure left me so broken down, I 
was so sick in mind and body that never have I been able to 
recall any portion of the circumstances ; perhaps it was be- 
cause you talked to me of him and appeared to love him. My 
God ! the long nights I have spent thinking of that time and 
weeping until the fountain of my tears was dry ! It is dread- 
ful to have done a thing that one had no wish to do and after- 
ward be unable to explain the reason of it. And he had for- 
given me, he had told me that he would marry me in spite of 
all when his time was out, if those hateful Prussians only let 
him live. And you think I will return to you. No, never, 
never ! not if 1 were to die for it ! ” 

Goliah’s face grew dark. She had always been so submis- 
sive, and now he saw she was not to be shaken in her fixed 
resolve. Notwithstanding his easy-going nature he was deter- 
mined he would have her, even if he should be compelled to 
use force, now that he was in a position to enforce his author- 
ity, and it was only his inherent prudence, the instinct that 
counseled him to patience and diplomacy, that kept him from 
resorting to violent measures now. The hard-fisted colossus 
was averse to bringing his physical powers into play ; he there- 
fore had recourse to another method for making her listen to 
reason. 

“Very well ; since you will have nothing more to do with 
me I will take away the child.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

Chariot, whose presence had thus far been forgotten by 
them both, had remained hanging to his mother’s skirts, strug- 
gling bravely to keep down his rising sobs as the altercation 
waxed more warm. Goliah, leaving his chair, approached the 
group. 

“ You’re my boy, aren’t you ? You’re a good little Prussian. 
Come along with me.” 

But before he could lay hands on the child Silvine, all a-quiver 
with excitement, had thrown her arms about it and clasped it 
to her bosom. 

“ He, a Prussian, never ! He’s French, was born in 
France ! ” 

“ You say he’s French ! Look at him, and look at me ; he’s 
my very image. Can you say he resembles you in any one of 
his features ? ” 

Sh9 turned her eyes on the big, strapping lothario, with his 


470 


THE DOWNFALL, 


curling hair and beard and his broad, pink face, in which the 
great blue eyes gleamed like globes of polished porcelain ; and 
it was only too true, the little one had the same yellow thatch, 
the same rounded cheeks, the same light eyes ; every feature 
of the hated race was reproduced faithfully in him. A tress 
of her jet black hair that had escaped from its confinement 
and wandered down upon her shoulder in the agitation of the 
moment showed her how little there was in common between 
the child and her. 

“ I bore him ; he is mine ! ” she screamed in fury. “ He’s 
French, and will grow up to be a Frenchman, knowing no 
word of your dirty German language ; and some day he shall 
go and help to kill the whole pack of you, to avenge those 
whom you have murdered ! ” 

Chariot, tightening his clasp about her neck, began to cry, 
shrieking ; 

“ Mammy, mammy, I'm 'fraid ! take me away ! ” 

Then Goliah, doubtless because he did not wish to create a 
scandal, stepped back, and in a harsh, stern voice, unlike any- 
thing she had ever heard from his lips before, made this 
declaration : 

“ Bear in mind what I am about to tell you, Silvine. I 
know all that happens at this farm. You harbor the francs- 
tireurs from the wood of Dieulet, among them that Sambuc 
who is brother to your hired man ; you supply the bandits with 
provisions. And I know that that hired man. Prosper, is a 
chas.seur d’Afrique and a deserter, and belongs to us by rights. 
Further, I know that you are concealing on your premises a 
wounded man, another soldier, whom a word from me would 
suffice to consign to a German fortress. What do you think : 
am I not well informed?” 

She was listening to him now, tongue-tied and terror-stricken, 
while little Chariot kept piping in her ear with lisping voice : 

“ Oh ! mammy, mammy, take me away. I'm ’fraid ! ” 

“ Come,” resumed Goliah, “ I’m not a bad fellow, and I 
don’t like quarrels and bickering, as you are well aware, but I 
swear by all that’s holy I will have them all arrested. Father 
Fouchard and the rest, unless you consent to admit me to 
your chamber on Monday next. I will take the child, too, and 
send him away to Germany to ray mother, who will be very 
glad to have him ; for you have no further right to him, you 
know, if you are going to leave me. You understaifd me, don’t 
you ? The folks will all be gone, and all I shall have to do 


THE DOWNFALL, 471 

will be to come and carry him away. I am the master ; I can 
do what pleases me — come, what have you to say ? ” 

But she made no answer, straining the little one more 
closely to her breast as if fearing he might be torn from her 
then and there, and in her great eyes was a look of mingled 
terror and execration. 

“ It is well ; I give you three days to think the matter over. 
See to it that your bedroom window that opens on the orchard 
is left open. If I do not find the window open next Monday 
evening at seven o’clock I will come with a detail the following 
day and arrest the inmates of the house, and then will return 
and bear away the little one. Think of it well ; au revoir^ 
Silvine.” 

He sauntered quietly away, and she remained standing, 
rooted to her place, her head filled with such a swarming, buz- 
zing crowd of terrible thoughts that it seemed to her she must 
go mad. And during the whole of that long day the tempest 
raged in her. At first the thought occurred to her instinctively 
to take her child in her arms and fly with him, wherever chance 
might direct, no matter where ; but what would become of 
them when night should fall and envelop them in darkness ? 
how earn a livelihood for him and for herself ? Then she 
determined she would speak to Jean, would notify Prosper, 
and Father Fonchard himself, and again she hesitated and 
changed her mind : was she sufficiently certain of Che friend- 
ship of those people that she could be sure they would not 
sacrifice her to the general safety, she who was cause that they 
were menaced all with such misfortune ? No, she would say 
nothing to anyone ; she would rely on her own efforts to 
extricate herself from the peril she had incurred by braving 
that bad man. But what scheme could she devise; vion Dieu! 
how could she avert the threatened evil, for her upright nature 
revolted ; she could never have forgiven herself had she been 
the instrument of bringing disaster to so many people, to Jean 
in particular, who had always been so good to Chariot. 

The hours passed, one by one ; the next day’s sun went 
down, and still she had decided upon nothing. She went 
about her household duties as usual, sweeping the kitchen, 
attending to the cows, making the soup. No word fell from 
her lips, and rising ever amid the ominous silence she pre- 
served, her hatred of Goliah grew with every hour and impreg- 
nated her nature with its poison. He had been her curse ; 
had it not been for him she would have waited for Honors, 


472 


THE DOWNFALL. 


and Honore would be living now, and she would be happy. 
Think of his tone and manner when he made her understand 
he was the master ! He had told her the truth, moreover ; 
there were no longer gendarmes or judges to whom she could 
apply for protection ; might made right. Oh, to be the 
stronger ! to seize and overpower him when he came, he who 
talked of seizing others ! All she considered was the child, 
flesh of her flesh ; the chance-met father was naught, never 
had been aught, to her. She had no particle of wifely feeling 
toward him, only a sentiment of concentrated rage, the deep- 
seated hatred of the vanquished for the victor, when she 
thought of him. Rather than surrender the child to him she 
would have killed it, and killed herself afterward. And as she 
had told him, the child he had left her as a gift of hate she 
would have wished were already grown and capable of de- 
fending her ; she looked into the future and beheld him with 
a musket, slaughtering hecatombs of Prussians. Ah, yes ! one 
Frenchman more to assist in wreaking vengeance on the 
hereditary foe ! 

There was but one day remaining, however ; she could not 
afford to waste more time in arriving at a decision. At the 
very outset, indeed, a hideous project had presented itself 
among the whirling thoughts that filled her poor, disordered 
mind ; to notify the francs-tireurs, to give Sambucthe informa- 
tion he desired so eagerly ; but the idea had not then assumed 
definite form and shape, and she had put it from her as too 
atrocious, not suffering herself even to consider it : was not 
that man the father of her child ? she could not be accessory 
to his murder. Then the thought returned, and kept returning 
at more frequently recurring intervals, little by little forcing 
itself upon her and enfolding her in its unholy influence ; and 
now it had entire possession of her, holding her captive by the 
strength of its simple and unanswerable logic. The peril and 
calamity that overhung them all would vanish with that man ; 
he in his grave, Jean, Prosper, Father Fouchard would have 
nothing more to fear, while she herself would retain possession 
of Chariot and there would be never a one in all the world to 
challenge her right to him. All that day she turned and re- 
turned the project in her mind, devoid of further strength to 
bid it down, considering despite herself the murder in its 
different aspects, planning and arranging its most minute 
details. And now it was become the one fixed, dominant idea, 
making a portion of her being, that she no longer stopped to 


THE DOWNFALL. 


473 


reason on, and when finally she cartie to act, in obedience to 
that dictate of the inevitable, she went forward as in a dream, 
subject to the volition of another, a someone within her whose 
presence she had never known till then. 

Father Fouchard had taken alarm, and on Sunday he dis- 
patched a messenger to the francs-tireurs to inform them that 
their supply of bread would be forwarded to the quarries of 
Boisville, a lonely spot a mile and a quarter from the house, and 
as Prosper had other work to do the old man sent Silvine with 
the wheelbarrow. It was manifest to the young woman that 
Destiny had taken the matter in its hands ; she spoke, she 
made an appointment with Sambuc for the following evening, 
and there was no tremor in her voice, as if she were pursuing 
a course marked out for her from which she could not depart. 
The next day there were still other signs which proved that 
not only sentient beings, but inanimate objects as well, favored 
the crime. In the first place Father Fouchard was called sud- 
denly away to Raucourt, and knowing he could not get back 
until after eight o’clock, instructed them not to wait dinner 
for him. Then Henriette, whose night off it was, received 
word from the: hospital late in the afternoon that the nurse 
whose turn it was to watch was ill and she would have to take 
her place ; and as Jean never left his chamber under any cir- 
cumstances, the only remaining person from whom interfer- 
ence was to be feared was Prosper. It revolted the chasseur 
d’Afrique, the idea of killing a man that way, three against 
one, but when his brother arrived, accompanied by his faithful 
myrmidons, the disgust he felt for the villainous crew was lost 
in his detestation of the Prussians; sure he wasn’t going to 
put himself out to save one of the dirty hounds, even if they 
did do him up in a way that was not according to rule ; and 
he settled matters with his conscience by going to bed and 
burying his head under the blankets, that he might hear noth- 
ing that would tempt him to act in accordance with his sol- 
dierly instincts. 

It lacked a quarter of seven, and Chariot seemed determined 
not to go to sleep. As a general thing his head declined upon 
the table the moment he held swallowed his last mouthful of 
soup. 

“ Come, my darling, go to sleep,” said Silvine, who had 
taken him to Henriette’s room ; mamma has put you in the 
nice lady’s big bed.” 

But the child was excited by the novelty of the situation ; 


474 


THE DOWNFALL. 


he kicked and sprawled upon the bed, bubbling with laughter 
and animal spirits. 

“ No, no — stay, little mother — play, little mother.” 

She was very gentle and patient, care.ssing him tenderly and 
repeating : 

“ Go to sleep, my darling ; shut your eyes and go to sleep, 
to please mamma.” 

And finally slumber overtook him, with a happy laugh upon 
his lips. She had not taken the trouble to undress him ; she 
covered him warmly and left the room, and so soundly was he 
in the habit of sleeping that she did not even think it necessary 
to turn the key in the door. 

Silvine had never known herself to be so calm, so clear and 
alert of mind. Her decision was prompt, her movements were 
light, as if she had parted company with her material frame 
and were acting under the domination of that other self, that 
inner being which she had never known till then. She had 
already let in Sambuc, with Cabasse and Ducat, enjoining upon 
them the exercise of the strictest caution, and now she con- 
ducted them to her bedroom and posted them on either side the 
window, which she threw open wide, notwithstanding the in- 
tense cold. The darkness was profound ; barely a faint glim- 
mer of light penetrated the room, reflected from the bosom of 
the snow without. A deathlike stillness lay on the deserted 
fields, the minutes lagged interminably. Then, when at last the 
deadened sound was heard of footsteps drawing near, Silvine 
withdrew and returned to the kitchen, where she seated herself 
and waited, motionless as a corpse, her great eyes fixed on the 
flickering flame of the solitary candle. 

And the suspense was . long protracted, Goliah prowling 
warily about the house before he would risk entering. He 
thought he could depend on the young woman, and had there- 
fore come unarmed save for a single revolver in his belt, but he 
was haunted by a dim presentiment of evil ; he pushed open 
the window to its entire extent and thrust his head into the 
apartment, calling below his breath : 

“ Silvine ! Silvine ! ” 

Since he found the window open to him it must be that she 
had thought better of the matter and changed her mind. It 
gave him great pleasure to have it so, although he would rather 
she had been there to welcome him and reassure his fears. 
Doubtless Father Fouchard had summoned her away ; some 


THE DOWNFALL.. 


475 


odds and ends of work to finish up. He raised his voice a 
little : 

“ Silvine ! Silvine ! ” 

No answer, not a sound. And he threw his leg over the 
window-sill and entered the room, intending to get into bed 
and snuggle away among the blankets while waiting, it was so 
bitter cold. 

All at once there was a furious rush, with the noise of tramp- 
ling, shuffling feet, and smothered oaths and the sound of la- 
bored breathing. Sambuc and his two companions had thrown 
themselves on Goliah, and notwithstanding their superiority 
in numbers they found it no easy task to overpower the giant, 
to whom his peril lent tenfold strength. The panting of the 
combatants, the straining of sinews and cracking of joints, re- 
sounded for a moment in the obscurity. The revolver, fortu- 
nately, had fallen to the floor in the struggle. Cabasse’s chok- 
ing, inarticulate voice was heard exclaiming : “ The cords, 

the cords ! ” and Ducat handed to Sambuc the coil of thin rope 
with which they had had the foresight to provide themselves. 
Scant ceremony was displayed in binding their hapless victim ; 
the operation was conducted to the accompaniment of kicks 
and cuffs. The legs were secured first, then the arms were 
firmly pinioned to the sides, and finally they wound the cord 
at random many times around the Prussian’s body, wherever 
his contortions w'ould allow them to place it, with such an af- 
fluence of loops and knots that he had the appearance of being 
enmeshed in a gigantic net. To his unintermitting outcries 
Ducat’s voice responded : “ Shut your jaw ! ” and Cabasse 

silenced him more effectually by gagging him with an old blue 
handkerchief. Then, first waiting a moment to get their 
breath, they carried him, an inert mass, to the kitchen and de- 
posited him upon the big table, beside the candle. 

Ah, the Prussian scum ! ” exclaimed Sambuc, wiping the 
sweat from his forehead, “ he gave us trouble enough ! Say, 
Silvine, light another candle, will you, so we can get a good 
view of the d — d pig and see what he looks like.” 

Silvine arose, her wide-dilated eyes shining bright from out 
her colorless face. She spoke no word, but lit another candle 
and came and placed it by Goliah’s head on the side opposite i 
the other; he produced the effect, thus brilliantly illumin-l 
ated, of a corpse between two mortuary tapers And in thatj 
brief moment their glances met ; his was the wild, agonized 


476 


THE DOWNFALL. 


look of the supplicant whom his fears have overmastered, but 
she affected not to understand, and withdrew to the sideboard, 
where she remained standing with her icy, unyielding air. 

“ The beast has nearly chewed my finger off,” growled 
Cabasse, from whose hand blood was trickling. “ I’m going to 
spoil his ugly mug for him.” 

He had taken the revolver from the floor and was holding 
it poised by the barrel in readiness to strike, when Sambuc dis- 
armed him. 

“ No, no ! none of that. We are not murderers, we francs- 
tireurs; we are judges. Do you hear, you dirty Prussian? 
we’re going to try you ; and you need have no fear, your rights 
shall be respected. We can’t let you speak in your own de- 
fense, for if we should unmuzzle you you would split our ears 
with your bellowing, but I’ll see that you have a lawyer pres- 
ently, and a famous good one, too ! ” 

He went and got three chairs and placed them in a row^ 
forming what it pleased him to call the court, he sitting in the 
middle with one of his followers on either hand. When all 
three were seated he arose and commenced to speak, at first 
ironically aping the gravity of the magistrate, but soon launch- 
ing into a tirade of blood-thirsty invective. 

“ 1 have the honor to be at the same time President of the 
Court and Public Prosecutor. That, I am aware, is not 
strictly in order, but there are not enough of us to fill all the 
roles. I accuse you, therefore, of entering France to play the 
spy on us, recompensing us for our hospitality with the most 
abominable treason. It is to you to whom we are principally 
indebted for our recent disasters, for after the battle of Nou- 
art you guided the Bavarians across the wood of Dieulet by 
night to Beaumont. No one but a man who had lived a long 
time in the country and was acquainted with every path and 
crossroad could have done it, and on this point the conviction 
of the court is unalterable ; you were seen conducting the en- 
emy’s artillery over roads that had become lakes of liquid mud, 
where eight horses had to be hitched to a single gun to drag 
it out of the slough. A person looking at those roads would 
hesitate to believe that an army corps could ever have passed 
over them. Had it not been for you and your criminal action 
in settling among us and betraying us the surprise of Beaumont 
would have never been, we sJiould not have been compelled to 
retreat on .Sedan, and perhaps in the end we might have come 
off victorious, X will say nothing of the disgusting career you 


THE DOWNFALL. 


477 


have been pursuing since then, coming here in disguise, ter- 
rorizing and denouncing the poor country people, so that they 
tremble at the mention of your name. You have descended to 
a depth of depravity beyond which it is impossible to go, and 
I demand, from the court sentence of death.” 

Silence prevailed in the room. He had resumed his seat, 
and finally, rising again, said : 

“ I assign Ducat to you as counsel for the defense. He has 
been sheriff’s officer, and might have made his mark had it not 
been for his little weakness. You see that I deny you noth- 
ing ; we are disposed to treat you well.” 

Goliah, who could not stir a finger, bent his eyes on his 
improvised defender. It was in his eyes alone that evidence 
of life remained, eyes that burned intensely with ardent sup- 
plication ‘under the ashy brow, where the sweat of anguish 
stood in big drops,. notwithstanding the cold. 

Ducat arose and commenced his plea. “ Gentlemen, my 
client, to tell the truth, is the most noisome blackguard that I 
ever came across in my life, and I should not have been willing 
to appear in his defense had I not a mitigating circumstance 
to plead, to wit : they are all that way in the country he came 
from. Look at him closely ; you will read his astonishment 
in his eyes ; he does not understand the gravity of his offense. 
Here in France we may employ spies, but no one would touch 
one of them unless with a pair of pincers, while in that country 
espionage is considered a highly honorable career and an ex- 
tremely meritorious manner of serving the state. I will even 
go so far as to say, gentlemen, that possibly they are not 
wrong ; our noble sentiments do us honor, but they have also 
the disadvantage of bringing us defeat. If I may venture to 
speak in the language of Cicero and Virgil, quos viilt perdere 
Jupiter dernentat. You will understand the allusion, gentle- 
men.” 

And he took his seat again, while Sambuc resumed : 

“And you, Cabasse, have you nothing to say either for or 
against the defendant?” 

“ All I have to say,” shouted the Provencal, “ is that we are 
wasting.a deal of breath in settling that scoundrel’s hash. I’ve 
had my little troubles in my lifetime, and plenty of ’em, but I 
don’t like to see people trifle with the affairs of the law ; it’s 
unlucky. Let him die, I say ! ” 

Sambuc rose to his feet with an air of profound gravity. 

This you both declare to be your verdict, then — death ? ” 


478 


THE DOWNFALL. 


Yes, yes ! death ! ” 

The chairs were pushed back, he advanced to the table 
where Goliah lay, saying : 

You have been tried and sentenced ; you are to die.” 

The flame of the two candles rose about their unsnuffed 
wicks and flickered in the draught, casting a fitful, ghastly 
light on Goliah’s distorted features. The fierce efforts he 
made to scream for mercy, to vociferate the words that were 
strangling him, were such that the handkerchief knotted across 
his mouth was drenched with spume, and it was a sight most 
horrible to see, that strong man reduced to silence, voiceless 
already as a corpse, about to die with that torrent of excuse 
and entreaty pent in his bosom. 

Cabasse cocked the revolver. “ Shall I let him have it ? ” 
he asked. 

No, no ! ” Sambuc shouted in reply ; “ he would be only 
too glad.” And turning to Goliah : “ You are not a soldier ; 
you are not worthy of the honor of quitting the world with a 
bullet in your head. No, you shall die the death of a spy and 
the dirty pig that you are.” 

He looked over his shoulder and politely said : 

“ Silvine, if it’s not troubling you too much, I would like to 
have a tub.” 

During the whole of the trial scene Silvine had not moved a 
muscle. She had stood in an attitude of waiting, with drawn, 
rigid features, as if mind and body had parted company, con- 
scious of nothing but the one fixed idea that had possessed 
her for the last two days. And when she was asked for a tub 
she received the request as a matter of course and proceeded 
at once to comply with it, disappearing into the adjoining 
shed, whence she returned with the big tub in which she 
washed Chariot’s linen. 

“ Hold on a minute I place it under the table, close to the 
edge.” 

She placed the vessel as directed, and as she rose to her 
feet her eyes again encountered Goliah’s. In the look of the 
poor wretch was a supreme prayer for mercy, the revolt of the 
man who cannot bear the thought of being stricken down in 
the pride of his strength. But in that moment there was noth- 
ing of the woman left in her ; nothing but the fierce desire for 
that death for which she had been waiting as a deliverance. 
She retreated again to the buffet, where she remained standing 
in silent expectation. 


THE DOWNFALL, 


479 

Sambuc opened the drawer of the table and took from it a 
large kitchen knife, the one that the household employed to 
slice their bacon. 

“ So, then, as you are a pig, I am going to stick you like a 
pig-” 

He proceeded in a very leisurely manner, discussing with 
Cabasse and Ducat the proper method of conducting the 
operation. They even came near quarreling, because 
Cabasse alleged that in Provence, the country he came from, 
they hung pigs up by the heels to stick them, at which Ducat 
expressed great indignation, declaring that the method was a 
barbarous and inconvenient one. 

“ Bring him well forward to the edge of the table, his head 
over the tub, so as to avoid soiling the floor.” 

They drew him forward, and Sambuc went about his task 
in a tranquil, decent manner. With a single stroke of the 
keen knife he slit the throat crosswise from ear to ear, and 
immediately the blood from the severed carotid artery com- 
menced to drip, drip into the tub with the gentle plashing of a 
fountain. He had taken care not to make the incision too 
deep ; only a few drops spirted from the wound, impelled by 
the action of the heart. Death was the slower in coming for 
that, but no convulsion was to be seen, for the cords were 
strong and the body was utterly incapable of motion. There 
was no death-rattle, not a quiver of the frame. On the face 
alone was evidence of the supreme agony, on that terror-dis- 
torted mask whence the blood retreated drop by drop, leav- 
ing the skin colorless, with a whiteness like that of linen. 
The expression faded from the eyes ; they became dim, the 
light died from out them. 

“ Say, Silvine, we shall want a sponge, too.” 

She made no reply, standing riveted to the floor in an atti- 
tude of unconsciousness, her arms folded tightly across her 
bosom, her throat constricted as by the clutch of a mailed 
hand, gazing on the horrible spectacle. Then all at once she 
perceived that Chariot was there, grasping her skirts with his 
little hands ; he must have awaked and managed to open the 
intervening doors, and no one had seen him come stealing in, 
childlike, curious to know what was going on. How long had 
he been there, half-concealed behind his mother? From be- 
neath his shock of yellow hair his big blue eyes were fixed on 
the trickling blood, the thin red stream that little by little was 
filling the tub. Perhaps he had not understood at first and 


48o 


THE DOWNFALL. 


had found something diverting in the sight, but suddenly he 
seemed to become instinctively aware of all the abomination 
of the thing ; he gave utterance to a sharp, startled 
cry : 

“ Oh, mammy ! oh, mammy ! Fm 'fraid, take me away ! ” 

It gave Silvine a shock, so violent that it convulsed her in 
every fiber of her being. It was the last straw ; something 
seemed to give way in her, the excitement that had sustained 
her for the last two days while under the domination of her 
one fixed idea gave way to horror. It was the resurrection of 
the dormant woman in her ; she burst into tears, and with a 
frenzied movement caught Chariot up and pressed him wildly 
to her heart. And she fled with him, running with distracted 
terror, unable to see or hear more, conscious of but one over- 
mastering need, to find some secret spot, it mattered not where, 
in which she might cast herself upon the ground and seek 
oblivion. 

It was at this crisis that Jean rose from his bed and, softly 
opening his door, looked out into the passage. Although he 
generally gave but small attention to the various noises that 
reached him from the farmhouse, the unusual activity that 
prevailed this evening, the trampling of feet, the shouts and 
cries, in the end excited his curiosity. And it was to the 
retirement of his sequestered chamber that Silvine, sobbing 
and disheveled, came for shelter, her form convulsed by 
such a storm of anguish that at first he could not grasp the 
meaning of the rambling, inarticulate words that fell from her 
blanched lips. She kept constantly repeating the same terri- 
fied gesture, as if to thrust from before her eyes some hideous, 
haunting vision. At last he understood, the entire abominable 
scene was pictured clearly to his mind : the traitorous ambush, 
the slaughter, the mother, her little one clinging to her skirts, 
watching unmoved the murdered father, whose life-blood was 
slowly ebbing ; and it froze his marrow — the peasant and the 
soldier was sick at heart with anguished horror. Ah, hateful, 
cruel war ! that changed all those poor folks to ravening 
wolves, bespattering the child with the father’s blood ! An 
accursed sowing, to end in a harvest of blood and tears ! 

Resting on the chair where she had fallen, covering with 
frantic kisses little Chariot, who clung, sobbing, to her bosom, 
Silvine repeated again and again the one unvarying phrase, 
the cry of her bleeding heart. 

“ Ah, my poor child, they will no more say you are a Prus- 


THE DOWNFALL. 


481 


slan ! Ah, my poor child, they will no more say you are a 
Prussian ! ” 

Meantime Father Fouchard had returned and was in the 
kitchen. He had come hammering at the door with the 
authority of the master, and there was nothing left to do but 
open to him. The surprise he experienced was not exactly an 
agreeable one on beholding the dead man outstretched on his 
table and the blood-filled tub beneath. It followed naturally, 
his disposition not being of the mildest, that he was very 
angry. 

“You pack of rascally slovens ! say, couldn’t you have gone 
outdoors to do your dirty work ? Do you take my place for a 
shambles, eh? coming here and ruining the furniture with 
such goings-on?” Then, as Sambuc endeavored to mollify 
him and explain matters, the old fellow went on with a violence 
that was enhanced by his fears : “And what do you suppose 
I am to do with the carcass, pray ? Do you consider it a 
gentlemanly thing to do, to come to a man’s house like this 
and foist a stiff off on him without so much as saying by your 
leave ? Suppose a patrol should come along, what a nice fix I 
should be in ! but precious little you fellows care whether I 
get my neck stretched or not. Now listen : do you take 
that body at once and carry it away from here ; if you don’t, 
by G — d, you and I will have a settlement ! You hear me ; 
take it by the head, take it by the heels, take it any way you 
please, but get it out of here and don’t let there be a hair of 
it remaining in this room at the end of three minutes from 
now ! ” 

In the end Sambuc prevailed on Father Fouchard to let 
him have a sack, although it wrung the old miser’s heart- 
strings to part with it. He selected one that was full of holes, 
remarking that anything was good enough for a Prussian. 
Cabasse and Ducat had all the trouble in the world to get 
Goliah into it ; it was too short and too narrow for the long, 
broad body, and the feet protruded at its mouth. Then they 
carried their burden outside and placed it on the wheelbarrow 
that had served to convey to them their bread. 

“ You’ll not be troubled with him any more, I give you my 
word of honor ! ” declared Sambuc. “ We’ll go and toss him 
into the Meuse.” 

“ Be sure and fasten a couple of big stones to his feet,” 
recommended Fouchard, “ so the lubber shan’t come up 
again.” 


4^2 


THE DOWNFALL. 


And the little procession, dimly outlined against the white 
waste of snow, started and soon was buried in the blackness 
of the night, giving no sound save the faint, plaintive creaking 
of the barrow. 

In after days Sambuc swore by all that was good and holy 
he had obeyed the old man’s directions, but none the less the 
corpse came to the surface and was discovered two days after- 
ward by the Prussians among the weeds at Pont-Maugis, and 
when they saw the manner of their countryman’s murder, his 
throat slit like a pig, their wrath and fury knew no bounds. 
•Their threats were terrible, and were accompanied by domi- 
ciliary visits and annoyances of every kind. Some of the vil- 
lagers must have'blabbed, forj there came a party one night 
and arrested Father Fouchard and the Mayor of Remilly on 
the charge of giving aid and comfort to thefrancs-tireurs, who 
were manifestly the perpetrators of the crime. And Father 
Fouchard really came out very strong under those untoward 
circumstances, exhibiting all the impassibility of a shrewd old 
peasant, who knew the value of silence and a tranquil demeanor. 
He went with his captors without the least sign of perturbation, 
without even asking them for an explanation. The truth 
would come out. In the country round about it was whispered 
that he had already made an enormous fortune from the 
Prussians, sacks and sacks of gold pieces, that he buried away 
somewhere, one by one, as he received them. 

All these stories were a terrible source of alarm to Henri- 
ette when she came to hear of them. Jean, fearing he might 
endanger the safety of his hosts, was again eager to get away, 
although the doctor declared he was still too weak, and she, 
saddened by the prospect of their approaching separation, in- 
sisted on his delaying his departure for two weeks. At the 
time of Father Fouchard’s arrest Jean had escaped a like fate 
by hiding in the barn, but he was liable to be taken and led 
away captive at any moment should there be further searches 
made. She was also anxious as to her uncle’s fate, and so 
she resolved one morning to go to Sedan and see the Dela- 
herches, who had, it was said, a Prussian officer of great in- 
fluence quartered in their house. 

“ Silvine,” she said, as she was about to start, “ take good 
care of our patient ; see he has his bouillon at noon and his 
medicine at four o’clock.” 

The maid of all work, ever busy with her daily recurring 
tasks, was again the submissive and courageous woman she 


THE DOWNFALL, 


483 


had been of old ; she had the care of the farm now, moreover, 
in the absence of the master, while little Chariot was con- 
stantly at her heels, frisking and gamboling around her. 

“ Have no fear, madame, he shall want for nothing. I am 
here and will look out for him.” 


VI. 

L ife had fallen back into something like its accustomed 
routine with the Delaherches at their house in the Rue 
Maqua after the terrible shock of the capitulation, and for 
nearly four months the long days had been slowly slipping by 
under the depressing influence of the Prussian occupation. 

There was one corner, however, of the immense structure 
that was always closed, as if it had no occupant : it was the 
chamber that Colonel de Vineuil still continued to inhabit, at 
the extreme end of the suite where the master and his family 
spent their daily life. While the other windows were thrown 
open, affording evidence by sight and sound of the activity 
that prevailed within, those of that room were dark and life- 
less, their blinds invariably drawn. The colonel had com- 
plained that the daylight hurt his eyes ; no one knew whether 
or not this was strictly true, but a lamp was kept burning at 
his bedside day and night to humor him in his fancy. For 
two long months he had kept his bed, although Major 
Bouroche asserted there was nothing more serious than a con- 
tusion of the ankle and a fragment of bone chipped away ; 
the wound refused to heal and complications of various kinds 
had ensued. He was able to get up now, but was in such a 
state of utter mental prostration, his mysterious ailment had 
taken such firm hold upon his system, that he was content to 
spend his days in idleness, stretched on a lounge before a 
great wood fire. He had wasted away until he was little 
more than a shadow, and still the physician who was attend- 
ing him could find no lesion to account for that lingering 
death. He was slowly fading away, like the flame of a lamp 
in which the supply of oil is giving out. 

Mme. Delaherche, the mother, had immured herself 
there with him on the day succeeding the occupation. No 
doubt they understood each other, and had expressed in two 
words, once for all, their common purpose to seclude them- 
selves in that apartment 30 long as there should be Prussians 


484 


THE DOWNFALL, 


quartered in the house. They had afforded compulsory hos- 
pitality to many of the enemy for various lengths of time ; 
one, a Captain, M, Gartlauben, was there still, had taken up 
his abode with them permanently. But never since that first 
day had mention of those things passed the colonel’s and the 
old lady’s lips. Notwithstanding her seventy-eight years she 
was up every morning soon as it was day and came and took 
her position in the fauteuil that was awaiting her in the chim- 
ney nook opposite her old friend. There, by the steady, tran- 
quil lamplight, she applied herself industriously to knitting 
socks for the children of the poor, while he, his eyes fixed on the 
crumbling brands, with no occupation for body or mind, was 
as one already dead, in a state of constantly increasing stupor. 
They certainly did not exchange twenty words in the course 
of a day ; whenever she, who still continued to go about the 
house at intervals, involuntarily allowed some bit of news 
from the outer world to escape her lips, he silenced her with 
a gesture, so that no tidings of the siege of Paris, the disasters 
on the Loire and all the daily renewed horrors of the invasion 
had gained admission there. But the colonel might stop his 
ears and shut out the light of day as he would in his self- 
appointed tomb ; the air he breathed must have brought him 
through key-hole and crevices intelligence of the calamity that 
was everywhere throughout the land, for every new day be- 
held him sinking, slowly dying, despite his determination not 
to know the evil news. 

While matters were in this condition at one end of the house 
Delaherche, who was never contented unless occupied, was 
bustling about and making attempts to start up his business 
once more, but what with the disordered condition of the 
labor market and the pecuniary embarrassment of many 
among his customers, he had so far only put a few looms in 
motion. Then it occurred to him, as a means of killing the 
time that hung heavy on his hands, to make a complete in- 
ventory of his business and perfect certain changes and im- 
provements that he had long had in mind. To assist him in 
his labors he had just then at his disposal a young man, the 
son of an old business acquaintance, who had drifted in on 
him after the battle. Edmond Lagarde, who, although he 
was twenty-three years old, would not have been taken for 
more than eighteen, had grown to man’s estate in his father’s 
little dry.goods shop at Passy ; he was a sergeant in the 5th 
line regiment and had fought with great bravery throughout 


THE DOWNFALL. 


485 


the campaign, so much so that he had been knocked over near 
the Minil gate about five o’clock, when the battle was virtually 
ended, his left arm shattered by one of the last shots fired that 
day, and Delaherche, when the other wounded were removed 
from the improvised ambulance in the drying room, had good- 
naturedly received him as an inmate of his house. It was 
under these circumstances that Edmond was now one of the 
family, having an apartment in the house and taking his meals 
at the common table, and, now that his wound was healed, 
acting as a sort of secretary to the manufacturer while wait- 
ing for a chance to get back to Paris. He had signed a parole 
binding himself not to attempt to leave the city, and owing to 
this and to his protector’s influence the Prussian authorities 
did not interfere with him. Pie was fair, with blue eyes, and 
pretty as a woman ; so timid withal that his face assumed a 
beautiful hue of rosy red whenever anyone spoke to him. He 
had been his mother’s darling ; she had impoverished herself, 
expending all the profits of their little business to .send him to 
college. And he adored Paris and bewailed his compulsory 
ab.sence from it when talking to Gilberte, did this wounded 
cherub, whom the young woman had displayed great good- 
fellowship in nursing. 

Finally, their household had received another addition in 
the person of M. de Gartlauben, a captain in the German 
landwehr, whose regiment had been sent to Sedan to supply 
the place of troops dispatched to service in the field. He was 
a personage of importance, notwithstanding his comparatively 
modest rank, for he was nephew to the governor-general, 
who, from his headquarters at Rheims, exercised unlimited 
power overall the district. He, too, prided himself on having- 
lived at Paris, and seized every occasion ostentatiously to 
show he was not ignorant of its pleasures and refinements ; 
concealing beneath this film of varnish his inborn rusticity, he 
assumed as well as he was able the polish of one accustomed 
to good society. His tall, portly form was always tightly 
buttoned 'in a close-fitting uniform, and he lied outrageously 
about his age, never being able to bring himself to own up to 
his forty-five years. Had he had more intelligence he might 
have made himself an object of greater dread, but as it was 
his over-weening vanity kept him in a continual state of satis- 
faction with himself, for never could such a thing have entered 
his mind as that anyone could dare to ridicule him. 

At a subsequent period he rendered Delaherche service^ 


486 


THE DOWNFALL. 


that were of inestimable value. But what days of terror and 
distress were those that followed upon the heels of the capitu- 
lation ! the city, overrun with German soldiery, trembled in 
momentary dread of pillage and conflagration. Then the 
armies of the victors streamed away toward the valley of the 
Seine, leaving behind them only sufficient men to form a garri- 
son, and the quiet that settled upon the place was that of a 
necropolis : the houses all closed, the shops shut, the streets 
deserted as soon as night closed in, the silence unbroken save 
for the hoarse cries and heavy tramp of the patrols. No letters 
or newspapers reached them from the outside world ; Sedan 
was become a dungeon, where the immured citizens waited in 
agonized suspense for the tidings of disaster with which the 
air was instinct. To render their misery complete they were 
threatened with famine ; the city awoke one morning from its 
slumbers to find itself destitute of bread and meat and the 
country round about stripped naked, as if a devouring swarm 
of locusts had passed that way, by the hundreds of thousands 
of men who for a week past had been pouring along its roads 
and across its fields in a devastating torrent. There were 
provisions only for two days, and the authorities were com- 
pelled to apply to Belgium for relief ; all supplies now came 
from their neighbors across the frontier, whence the customs 
guards had disappeared, swept away like all else in the general 
cataclysm. Finally there were never-ending vexations and 
annoyances, a conflict that commenced to rage afresh each 
morning between the Prussian governor and his underlings, 
quartered at the Sous-Prefecture, and the Municipal Council, 
which was in permanent session at the Hotel de Ville. It was 
all in vain that the city fathers fought like heroes, discussing, 
objecting, protesting, contesting the ground inch by inch ; 
the inhabitants had to succumb to the exactions that constantly 
became more burdensome, to the whims and unreasonableness 
of the stronger. 

In the beginning Delaherche suffered great tribulation from 
the officers and soldiers who were billeted on him. It seemed 
as if representatives from every nationality on the face of the 
globe presented themselves at his door, pipe in mouth. Not 
a day passed but there came tumbling in upon the city two or 
three thousand men, horse, foot and dragoons, and although 
they were by rights entitled to nothing more than shelter and 
firing, it was often found expedient to send out in haste and 
get them provisions. The rooms they occupied were left in a 


THE DOWNEALL. 


487 


shockingly filthy Condition. It was not an infrequent occur- 
rence that the officers came in drunk and made themselves 
even more obnoxious than their men. Such strict discipline 
was maintained, however, that instances of violence and 
marauding were rare ; in all Sedan there were but two cases 
reported of outrages committed on women. It was not until 
a later period, when Paris displayed such stubbornness in her 
resistance, that, exasperated by the length to which the strug- 
gle was protracted, alarmed by the attitude of the provinces 
and fearing a general rising of the populace, the savage war 
which the francs-tireurs had inaugurated, they laid the full 
weight of their heavy hand upon the suffering people. 

Delaherche had just had an experience with a lodger who 
had been quartered on him, a captain of cuirassiers, who made 
a practice of going to bed with his boots on and when he went 
away left his apartment in an unmentionably filthy condition, 
when in the last half of September Captain de Gartlauben 
came to his door one evening when it was raining in torrents. 
The first hour he was there did not promise well for the 
pleasantness of their future relations ; he carried matters with 
a high hand, insisting that he should be given the best bed- 
room, trailing the scabbard of his sword noisily up the marble 
staircase ; but encountering Gilberte in the corridor he drew 
in his horns, bowed politely, and passed stiffly on. He was 
courted with great obsequiousness, for everyone was well 
aware that a word from him to the colonel commanding the 
post of Sedan would suffice to mitigate a requisition or secure 
the release of a friend or relative. It was not very long since 
his uncle, the governor-general at Rheims, had promulgated a 
particularly detestable and cold-blooded order, proclaiming 
martial law and decreeing the penalty of death to whomso- 
ever should give aid and comfort to the enemy, whether by 
acting for them as a spy, by leading astray German troops 
that had been entrusted to their guidance, by destroying 
bridges and artillery, or by damaging the railroads and tele- 
graph lines. The enemy meant the French, of course, and 
the citizens scowled and involuntarily doubled their fists as 
they read the great white placard nailed against the door of 
post headquarters which attributed to them as a crime their 
best and most sacred aspirations. It was so hard, too, to have 
to receive their intelligence of German victories through the 
cheering of the garrison ! Hardly a day passed over their 
heads that they were spared this bitter humiliation ; the 


THE DDWHEALL. 


488 

soldiers would light great fires and' sit arouncf them, feasting 
and drinking all night long, while the townspeople, who were 
not allowed to be in the streets after nine o'clock, listened to the 
tumult from the depths of their darkened houses, crazed with 
suspense, wondering what new catastrophe had befallen. It 
was on one of these occasions, somewhere about the middle 
of October, that M. de Gartlauben for the first time proved 
himself to be possessed of some delicacy of feeling. Sedan 
had been jubilant all that day with renewed hopes, for there 
was a rumor that the army of the Loire, then marching , to the 
relief of Paris, had gained a great victory ; but how many 
times before had the best of news been converted into tidings 
of disaster ! and sure enough, early in the evening it became 
known for certain that the Bavarians had taken OH^ans. 
Some soldiers had collected in a house across the way from 
the factory in the Rue Maqua, and were so boisterous in their 
rejoicings that the Captain, noticing Gilberte’s annoyance, 
went and silenced them, remarking that he himself thought 
their uproar ill-timed. 

Toward the close of the month M. de Gartlauben was in 
position to render some further trifling services. The Prussian 
authorities, in the course of sundry administrative reforms in- 
augurated by them, had appointed a German Sous-Prefect, and 
although this step did not put an end to the exactions to which 
the city was subjected, the new official showed himself to be 
comparatively reasonable. One of the most frequent among 
the causes of difference that were constantly springing up be- 
tween the officers of the post and the municipal council was 
that which arose frorn the custom of requisitioning carriages 
for the use of the staff, and there was a great hullaballoo raised 
one morning that Delaherche failed to send his caleche and 
pair to the Sous-Pr^fecture : the mayor was arrested and -the 
manufacturer would have gone to keep him company up in 
the citadel had it not been for M. de Gartlauben, who promptly 
quelled the rising storm. Another day he secured a stay of 
proceedings for the city, which had been mulcted in the sum 
of thirty thousand francs to punish it for its alleged dilatori- 
ness in rebuilding the bridge of Villette, a bridge that the 
Prussians themselves had destroyed : a disastrous piece of 
business that was near being the ruin of Sedan. It was after 
the surrender at Metz, however, that Delaherche contracted 
his main debt of gratitude to his guest. The terrible news 
burst on the citizens like a thunderclap, dashing to the ground 


THE DOWNFALL. 


489 


all their remaining hopes, and early in the ensuing week the 
streets again began to be encumbered with the countless hosts 
of the German forces, streaming down from the conquered 
fortress : the army of Prince Frederick Charles moving on the 
Loire, that of General Manteuffel, whose destination was 
Amiens and Rouen, and other corps on the march to reinforce 
the besiegers before Paris. For several days the houses were 
full to overflowing with soldiers, the butchers’ and bakers’ 
shops were swept clean, to the last bone, to the last crumb; the 
streets were pervaded by a greasy, tallowy odor, as after the 
passage of the great migratory bands of olden times. The 
buildings in the Rue Maqiia, protected by a friendly influence, 
escaped the devastating irruption, and were only called on to 
give shelter to a few of the leaders, men of education and re- 
finement. 

Owing to these circumstances, D’elaherche at last began to 
lay aside his frostiness of manner. As a general thing the 
bourgeois families shut themselves in their apartments and 
avoided all communication with the officers who were billeted 
on them; but to him, who was of a sociable nature and liked 
to extract from life what enjoyment it 'had to offer, this en- 
forced sulkiness in the end became unbearable. His great, 
silent house, where the inmates lived apart from one another 
in a chill atmosphere of distrust and mutual dislike, damped 
his spirits terribly. He began by stopping M. de Gartlauben 
on the stairs one day to thank him for his favors, and thus by 
degrees it became a regular habit with the two men to ex- 
change a few words when they met. The result was that one 
evening the Prussian captain found himself seated in his host’s 
study before the fireplace where some great oak logs were blaz- 
ing, smoking a cigar and amicably discussing the news of the 
day. For the first two weeks of their new intimacy Gilberte 
did not make her appearance in the room ; he affected to ig- 
nore her existence, although, at every faintest sound, his glance 
would be directed expectantly upon the door of the connect- 
ing apartment. It seemed to be his object to keep his posi- 
tion as an enemy as much as possible in the background, try- 
ing to show he was not narrow-minded or a bigoted patriot, 
laughing and joking pleasantly over certain rather ridiculous 
requisitions. For example, a demand was made one day for 
a coffin and a shroud ; that shroud and coffin afforded him no 
end of amusement. As regarded other things, such as coal, 
oil, milk, sugar, butter, bread, meat, to say nothing of clothing, 


490 


THE DOWNFALL. 


stoves and lamps — all the necessaries of daily life, in a word — 
he shrugged his shoulders : mon Dieu ! what would you have ? 
No doubt it was vexatious ; he was even willing to admit that 
their demands were excessive, but that was how it was in war 
times ; they had to keep themselves alive in the enemy’s coun- 
try. Delaherche, who was very sore over these incessant req- 
uisitions, expressed his opinion of them with frankness, pull- 
ing them to pieces mercilessly at their nightly confabs, in much 
the same way as he might have criticised the cook’s kitchen 
accounts. On only one occasion did their discussion become at 
all acrimonious, and that was in relation to the impost of a 
million francs that the Prussian prefet at Rethel had levied on 
the department of the Ardennes, the alleged pretense of which 
was to indemnify Germany for damages caused by French ships 
of war and by the expulsion of Germans domiciled in French 
territory. Sedan’s proportionate share of the assessment 
was forty-two thousand francs. And he labored strenuously 
with his visitor to convince him of the iniquity of the imposi- 
tion; the city was differently circumstanced from the other 
towns, it had had more than its share of affliction, and should 
not be burdened with that new exaction. The pair always 
came out of their discussions better friends than when they 
went in; one delighted to have had an opportunity of hearing 
himself talk, the other pleased with himself for having displayed 
a truly Parisian urbanity. 

One evening Gilberte came into the room, with her air of 
thoughtless gayety. She paused at the threshold, affecting 
embarrassment. M. de Gartlauben rose, and with much tact 
presently withdrew, but on repeating his visit the following 
evening and finding Gilberte there again, he settled himself in 
his usual seat in the chimney-corner. It was the commence- 
ment of ’a succession of delightful evenings that they passed 
together in the study of the master of the house, not in the 
drawing room — wherein lay a nice distinction. And at a later 
period when, yielding to their guest’s entreaties, the young 
woman consented to play for him, she did not invite him to the 
salon, but entered the room alone, leaving the communicating 
door open. In those bitter winter evenings the old oaks of 
the Ardennes gave out a grateful warmth from the depths of 
the great cavernous fireplace ; there was a cup of fragrant tea 
for them about ten o’clock ; they laughed and chatted in the 
comfortable, bright room. And it did not require extra powers 
of vision to see that M. de Gartlauben was rapidly falling head 


THE downfall. 


49 1 

over ears in love with that sprightly young woman, who flirted 
with him as audaciously as she had flirted in former days at 
Charleville with Captain Beaudoin’s friends. He began to 
pay increased attention to his person, displayed a gallantry 
that verged on the fantastic, was raised to the pinnacle of 
bliss by the most trifling favor, tormented by the one ever- 
present anxiety not to appear a barbarian in her eyes, a rude 
soldier who did not know the ways of women. 

And thus it was that in the big, gloomy house in the Rue 
Maqua a twofold life went on. While at meal-times Edmond, 
the wounded cherub with the pretty face, lent a listening ear 
to Delaherche’s unceasing chatter, blushing if ever Gilberte 
asked him to pass her the salt, while at evening M. de Gart- 
lauben, seated in the study, with eyes upturned in silent 
ecstasy, listened to a sonata by Mozart performed for his 
benefit by the young woman in the adjoining drawing room, a 
stillness as of death continued to pervade the apartment where 
Colonel de Vineuil and Madame Delaherche spent their days, 
the blinds tight drawn, the lamp continually burning, like a 
votive candle illuminating a tomb. December had come and 
wrapped the city in a winding-sheet of snow ; the cruel news 
seemed all the bitterer for the piercing cold. After General 
Ducrot’s repulse at Champigny, after the loss of Orleans, there 
was left but one dark, sullen hope: that the soil of France 
might avenge their defeat, exterminate and swallow up the 
victors. Let the snow fall thicker and thicker still, let the 
earth’s crust crack and open under the biting frost, that in it 
the entire German nation might find a grave ! And there 
came another sorrow to wring poor Madame Delaherche’s 
heart. One night when her son was from home, having been 
suddenly called away to Belgium on business, chancing to pass 
Gilberte’s door she fneard within a low murmur of voices and 
smothered laughter. Disgusted and sick at heart she returned 
to her own room, where her horror of the abominable thing 
she suspected the existence of would not let her sleep : it 
could have been none other but the Prussian whose voice she 
heard ; she had thought she had noticed glances of intelli- 
gence passing ; she was prostrated by this supreme disgrace. 
Ah, that woman, that abandoned woman, whom her son had 
insisted on bringing to the house despite her commands and 
prayers, whom she had forgiven, by her silence, after Captain 
Beaudoin’s death ! And now the thing was repeated, and this 
time the infamy was even worse. What was she to do ? Such 


492 


THE DOWNFALL. 


an enormity must not go unpunished beneath her roof. Her 
mind was torn by the conflict that raged there, in her uncer- 
tainty as to the course she should pursue. The colonel, de- 
siring to know nothing of what occurred outside his room, 
always checked her with a gesture when he thought she was 
about to give him any piece of news, and she had said nothing 
to him of the matter that had caused her such suffering ; but 
on those days when she came to him with tears standing in her 
eyes and sat for hours in mournful silence, he would look at 
her and say to himself that France had sustained yet another 
defeat. 

This was the condition of affairs in the house in the Rue 
Maqua when Henriette dropped in there one morning to en- 
deavor to secure Delaherche’s influence in favor of Father 
Fouchard. She had heard people speak, smiling significantly 
as they did so, of the servitude to which Gilberte had reduced 
Captain de Gartlauben ; she was, therefore, somewhat embar- 
rassed when she encountered old Madame Delaherche, to 
whom she thought it her duty to explain the object of her 
visit, ascending the great staircase on her way to the colonel’s 
apartment. 

“ Dear madame, it would be so kind of you to assist us ! 
My uncle is in great danger ; they talk of sending him away 
to Germany.” 

The old lady, although she had a sincere affection for 
Henriette, could scarce conceal her anger as she replied : 

“ I am powerless to help you, my child ; you should not 
apply to me.” And she continued, notwithstanding the 
agitation on the other’s face : “ You have selected an unfor- 
tunate moment for your visit ; my son has to go to Belgium 
to-night. Besides, he could not have helped you ; he has no 
more influence than I have. Go to my daughter-in-law ; she 
is all powerful.” 

And she passed on toward the colonel’s room, leaving 
Henriette distressed to have unwittingly involved herself in 
a family drama. Within the last twenty-four hours Madame 
Delaherche had made up her mind to lay the whole matter 
before her son before his departure for Belgium, whither he 
was going to negotiate a large purchase of coal to enable him 
to put some of his idle looms in motion. She could not 
endure the thought that the abominable-thing should be re- 
peated beneath her ey^s while he was absent, and was only 
waiting to make sure he would not defer his departure until 


THE DOWNFALL. 


493 


some other day, as he had been doing all the past week. It 
was a terrible thing to contemplate : the wreck of her son's 
happiness, the Prussian disgraced and driven from their doors, 
the wife, too, thrust forth upon the street and her name igno- 
miniously placarded on the walls, as had been threatened 
would be done with any woman who should dishonor herself^ 
with a German. 

Gilberte gave a little scream of delight on beholding 
Henriette. 

“ Ah, how glad I am to see you ! It seems an age since we 
met, and one grows old so fast in the midst of all these 
horrors ! ” Thus running on she dragged her friend to her 
bedroom, where she seated her on the lounge and snuggled 
down close beside her. “ Come, take off your things ; you 
must stay and breakfast with us. But first we’ll talk a bit ; 
you must have such lots and lots of things to tell me ! I 
know that you are without news of your brother. Ah, that 
poor Maurice, how I pity him, shut up in Paris, with no gas, 
no wood, no bread, perhaps ! And that young man whom 
you have been nursing, that friend of your brother'’s — oh ! a 
little bird has told me all about it — isn’t it for his sake you 
are here to-day ? ” 

Henriette’s conscience smote her, and she did not answer. 
Was it not really for Jean’s sake that sh^ had come, in order 
that, the old uncle being released, the invalid, who had grown 
so dear to her, might have no further cause'Tor alarm ? It 
distressed her to hear his name mentioned by Gilberte ; she 
could not endure the thought of enlisting in his favor an in- 
fluence that was of so ambiguous a character. Her inbred 
scruples of a pure, honest woman made themselves felt, now it 
seemed to her that the rumors of a liaison with the Prussian 
captain had some foundation. 

“Then I’m to understand that it’s in behalf of this young 
man that you come to us for assistari)2e ? ” Gilberte insistently 
went on, as if enjoying her friend’s discomfiture. And as the 
latter, cornered and unable to maintain silence longer, finally 
spoke of Father Fouchard’s arrest : “Why, to be sure ! What 
a silly thing I am — and I was talking of it only this morning ! 
You did well in coming to us, my dear ; we must go about 
your uncle’s affair at once and see what we can do for him, 
for the last news I had was not reassuring. They are on the 
lookout for someone of whom to make an example.”, 

“ Yes, I have had you in mind all along,” Henriette hesi- 


4g4 


THE DOWNFALL. 


tatingly replied. “ I thought you might be willing to assist 
me with your advice, perhaps with something more substan- 
tial ” 

The young woman laughed merrily. “ You little goose, I’ll 
have your uncle released inside three days. Don’t you know 
that I have a Prussian captain here in the house who stands 
ready to obey my every order ? Understand, he can refuse 
me nothing ! ” And she laughed more heartily than ever, in 
the giddy, thoughtless triumph of her coquettish nature, hold- 
ing in her own and patting the hands of her friend, who was 
so uncomfortable that she could not find words in which to 
express her thanks, horrified by the avowal that was implied 
in what she had just heard. But how to account for such 
serenity, such childlike gayety ? “ Leave it to me ; I’ll send 

you home to-night with a mind at rest.” 

When they passed into the dining room Henriette was 
struck by Edmond’s delicate beauty, never having seen him 
before. She eyed him with the pleasure she would have felt 
in looking at a pretty toy. Could it be possible that that boy 
had served in the army ? and how could they have been so 
cruel as to break his arm ? The story of his gallantry in the 
field made him even more interesting still, and Delaherche, who 
had received Henriette with the cordiality of a man to whom 
the sight of a new face is a godsend, while the servants were 
handing round the cutlets and the potatoes cooked in their 
jackets, never seemed to tire of eulogizing his secretary, who 
was as industrious and well behaved as he was handsome. 
They made a very pleasant and homelike picture, the four, 
thus seated around the bright table in the snug, warm dining 
room. 

“ So you want us to interest ourselves in Father Fouchard’s 
case, and it’s to that we owe the pleasure of your visit, eh ?” 
said the manufacturer. “ I’m extremely sorry that I have to 
go away to-night, but my wife will set things straight for you 
in a jiffy ; there’s no resisting her, she has only to ask for a 
thing to get it.” He laughed as he concluded his speech, 
which was uttered in perfect simplicity of .soiil, evidently 
pleased and flattered that his wife possessed such influence, 
in which he shone with a kind of reflected glory. Then turn- 
ing suddenly to her : “ By the way, my dear, has Edmond 
told you of his great discovery ?” 

“ No ; what discovery ? ” asked Gilberte, turning her pretty, 
caressing eyes full on the young sergeant. 


THE DOWNFALL. 


495 


The cherub blushed whenever a woman looked at him in 
that way, as if the exquisiteness of his sensations was too much 
for him. “ It’s nothing, madame ; only a bit of old lace ; I 
heard you saying the other day you wanted some to put on 
your mauve peignoir. I happened yesterday to come across 
five yards of old Bruges point, something really handsome and 
very cheap. The woman will be here presently to show it to 
you.’’ 

She could have kissed him, so delighted was she. Oh, 
how nice of you ! You shall have your reward.” 

Then, while a terrine of foie gras, purchased in Belgium, 
was being served, the conversation took another turn ; dwelling 
for an instant on the quantities of fish that were dying of 
poison in the Meuse, and finally coming around to the subject 
of the pestilence that menaced Sedan when there should be a 
thaw. Even as early as November, there had been several 
cases of disease of an epidemic character. Six thousand francs 
had been expended after the battle in cleansing the city and 
collecting and burning clothing, knapsacks, haversacks, all 
the debris that was capable of harboring infection ; but, for all 
that, the surrounding fields continued to exhale sickening odors 
whenever there came a day or two of warmer weather, so 
replete were they with half-buried corpses, covered only with 
a few inches of loose earth. In every direction the ground 
was dotted with graves ; the soil cracked and split in obedi- 
ence to the forces acting beneath its surface, and from the 
fissures thus formed the gases of putrefaction issued to poison 
the living. In those more recent days, moreover, another 
center of contamination had been discovered, the Meuse, 
although there had already been removed from it the bodies 
of more than twelve hundred dead horses. It was generally 
believed that there were no more human remains left in the 
stream, until, one day, a garde champetre^ looking attentively 
down into the water where it was some six feet deep, dis- 
covered some objects glimmering at the bottom, that at first he 
took for stones ; but they proved to be corpses of men, that 
had been mutilated in such a manner as to prevent the gas 
from accumulating in the cavities of the body and hence had 
been kept from rising to the surface. For near four months 
they had been lying there in the water among the eel-grass. 
When grappled for the irons brought them up in fragments, a 
head, an arm, or a leg at a time ; at times the force of the 
current would suffice to detach a hand or foot and send it 


496 


THE DOWNFALL. 


rolling down the stream. Great bubbles of gas rose to the 
surface and burst, still further empoisoning the air. 

“ We shall get along well enough as long as the cold weather 
lasts,” remarked Delaherche, “ but as soon as the snow is off 
the ground we shall have to go to work in earnest to abate 
the nuisance ; if we don’t we shall be wanting graves for our- 
selves.” And when his wife laughingly asked him if he could 
not find some more agreeable subject to talk about at the table, 
he concluded by saying : “ Well, it will be a long time before 
any of us will care to eat any fish out of the Meuse.” 

I'hey had finished their repast, and the coffee was being 
poured, when the maid came to the door and announced that 
M. de Gartlauben presented his compliments and wanted to 
know if he might be allowed to see them for a moment. 
There was a slight flutter of excitement, for it was the first 
time he had ever presented himself at that hour of the day. 
Delaherche, seeing in the circumstance a favorable opportunity 
for presenting Henriette to him, gave orders that he should be 
introduced at once. The doughty captain, when he beheld 
another young woman in the room, surpassed himself in polite- 
ness, even accepting a cup of coffee, which he took without 
sugar, as he had seen many people do at Paris. He had only 
asked to be received at that unusual hour, he said, that he 
might tell Madame he had succeeded in obtaining the pardon 
of one of her proteges, a poor operative in the factory who 
had been arrested on account of a squabble with a Prussian. 
And Gilberte thereon seized the opportunity to mention Father 
Fouchard’s case. 

“ Captain, I wish to make you acquainted with one of my 
dearest friends, who desires to place herself under your pro- 
tection. She is the niece of the farmer who was arrested lately 
at Remilly, as you are aware, for being mixed up with that 
business of the francs-tireurs.” 

“Yes,*yes, I know; the affair of the spy, the poor fellow 
who was found in a sack with his throat cut. It’s a bad busi- 
ness, a very bad business. I am afraid I shall not be able to 
do anything.” 

“ Oh, Captain, don’t say that ! I should consider it such a 
favor ! ” 

There was a caress in the look she cast on him, while he 
beamed with satisfaction, bowing his head in gallant obedience. 
Jler wish was his law ! 

“You would have all my gratitude, sir,” faintly murmured 


THE DOWNFALL. 


497 


Henriette, to whose memory suddenly rose the image of her 
husband, her dear Weiss, slaughtered down yonder at Ba- 
zeilles, filling her with invincible repugnance. 

Edmond, who had discreetly taken himself off on the arrival 
of the captain, now reappeared and whispered something in 
Gilberte’s ear. She rose quickly from the table, and, an- 
nouncing to the company that she was going to inspect her 
lace, excused herself and followed the young man from the 
room. Henriette, thus left alone with the two men, went and 
took a seat by herself in the embrasure of a window, while 
they remained seated at the table and went on talking in a 
loud tone. 

“ Captain, you’ll have 2. petit verre with me. You see I 
don’t stand on ceremony with you ; I say whatever comes into 
my head, because I know you to be a fair-minded man. Now 
I tell you your prefet is all wrong in trying to extort those 
forty-two thousand francs from the city. Just think once of 
all our losses since the beginning of the war. In the first 
place, before the battle, we had the entire French army on our 
hands, a set of ragged, hungry, exhausted men ; and then 
along came your rascals, and their appetites were not so very 
poor, either. The passage of those troops through the place, 
what with requisitions, repairing damages and expenses of all 
sorts, stood us in a million and a half. Add as much more 
for the destruction caused by your artillery and by conflagra- 
tion during the battle ; there you have three millions. Finally, 
I am well within bounds in estimating the loss sustained by 
our trade and manufactures at two millions. What do you 
say to that, eh ? A grand total of five million francs for a 
city of thirteen thousand inhabitants ! And now you come 
and ask us for forty-two thousand more as a contribution to» 
the expense of carrying on the war against us ! Is it fair, is, 
it reasonable ? I leave it to your own sense of justice.” 

M. de Gartlauben nodded his head with an air of profundity, 
and made answer : 

“ What can you expect ? It is the fortune of war, the fortune 
of war.” 

To Henriette, seated in her window seat, her ears ringing, 
and vague, sad images of every sort fleeting through her 
brain, the time seemed to pass with mortal slowness, while 
Delaherche asserted on his word of honor that Sedan could 
never have weathered the crisis produced by the exportation 
of all their specie had it not been for the wisdom of the local 


498 


THE DOWNFALL. 


magnates in emitting an issue of paper money, a step that 
had saved the city from financial ruin. 

“ Captain, will you have just a drop of cognac more ? ” and 
he skipped to another topic. “ It was not France that started 
the war ; it was the Emperor. Ah, I was greatly deceived in 
the Emperor. He need never expect to sit on the throne 
again ; we would see the country dismembered first. Look 
here ! there was just one man in this country last July who 
saw things as they were, and that was M. Thiers; and his action 
at the present time in visiting the different capitals of Europe 
is most wise and patriotic. He has the best wishes of every 
good citizen ; may he be successful ! ’’ 

He expressed the conclusion of his idea by a gesture, for he 
would have considered it improper to speak of his desire for 
peace before a Prussian, no matter how friendly he might be, 
although the desire burned fiercely in his bosom, as it did in 
that of every member of the old conservative bourgeoisie who 
had favored the plebiscite. Their men and money were ex- 
hausted, it was time for them to throw up the sponge ; and 
a deep-seated feeling of hatred toward Paris, for the obstinacy 
with which it held out, prevailed in all the provinces that were 
in possession of the enemy. He concluded in a lower tone, 
his allusion being to Gambetta’s inflammatory proclamations : 

“ No, no, we cannot give our suffrages to fools and mad- 
men. The course they advocate would end in general massa- 
cre. I, for my part, am for M. Thiers, who would submit the 
questions at issue to the popular vote, and as for their Repub- 
lic, great heavens ! let them have it if they want it, while wait- 
ing for something better ; it don’t trouble me in the slightest.” 

Captain de Gartlauben continued to nod his head very po- 
litely with an approving air, murmuring : 

“ To be sure, to be sure ” 

Henriette, whose feeling of distress had been increasing, 
could stand their talk no longer. She could assign no definite 
reason for the sensation of inquietude that possessed her ; it 
was only a longing to get away, and she rose and left the 
room quietly in quest of Gilberte, whose absence had been so 
long protracted. On entering the bedroom, however, she was 
greatly surprised to find her friend stretched on the lounge, 
weeping bitterly and manifestly suffering from some extremely 
painful emotion. 

“ Why, what is the matter ? What has happened you ? ” 

The young woman’s tears flowed faster still and she would 


THE DOWNFALL. 


499 


not speak, manifesting a confusion that sent every drop of 
blood coursing from her heart up to her face. At last, 
throwing herself into the arms that were opened to receive her 
and concealing her face in the other’s bosom, she stammered : 

Oh, darling if you but knew. I shall never dare to tell 
you — and yet I have no one but you, you alone perhaps can 
tell me what is best to do.” A shiver passed through her 
frame, her voice was scarcely audible. “ I was with 
Edmond — and then — and then Madame Delaherche came 
into the room and caught me ” 

“ Caught you ! What do you mean ? ” 

“Yes, we were here in the room; he was holding me in his 
arms and kissing me ” And clasping Henriette convul- 

sively in her trembling arms she told her all. “ Oh, my 
darling, don’t judge me severely ; I could not bear it ! I 
know I promised you it should never happen again, but you 
have seen Edmond, you know how brave he is, how hand- 
some ! And think once of the poor young man, wounded, ill, 
with no one to give him a mother’s care ! And then he has 
never had the enjoyments that wealth affords ; his family 
have pinched themselves to give him an education. I could 
not be harsh with him.” 

Henriette listened, the picture of surprise ; she could not 
recover from her amazement. “ What ! you don’t mean to 
say it was the little sergeant ! Why, my dear, everyone be- 
lieves the Prussian to be your lover ! ” 

Gilberte straightened herself up with an indignant air, and 
dried her eyes. “The Prussian my lover? No, thank you! 
He’s detestable ; I can’t endure him. I wonder what they 
take me for? What have I ever done that they should sup- 
pose I could be guilty of such baseness? No, never! I 
would rather die than do such a thing ! ” In the earnestness 
of her protestations her beauty had assumed an angry and 
more lofty cast that made her look other than she was. And 
all at once, sudden as a flash, her coquettish gayety, her 
thoughtless levity, came back to her face, accompanied by a 
peal of silvery laughter. “I won’t deny that I amuse myself 
at his expense. He adores me, and I have only to give him a 
look to make him obey. You have no idea what fun it is to 
bamboozle that great big man, who seems to think he will 
have his reward some day.” 

“ But that is a very dangerous game you’re playing,” Hen- 
riette gravely said. 


500 


THE DOWNFALL. 


Oh, do you think sO ? What risk do I incur ? When he 
comes to see he has nothing to expect he can’t do more than 
be angry with me and go away. But he will never see it ! 
You don’t know the man ;• I read him like a book from the 
very start : he is one of those men with whom a woman can 
do what she pleases and incur no danger. I have an instinct 
that guides me in these matters and which has never deceived 
me. He is too consumed by vanity ; no human consideration 
will ever drive it into his head that by any possibility a woman 
could get the better of him. And all he will get from me will 
be permission to carry away my remembrance, with the con- 
soling thought that he has done the proper thing and behaved 
himself like a gallant man who has long been an inhabitant of 
Paris.” And with her air of triumphant gayety she added ; 
“ But before he leaves he shall cause Uncle Fouchard to be 
set at liberty, and all his recompense for his trouble shall be a 
cup of tea sweetened by these fingers.” 

But suddenly her fears returned to her : she remembered 
what must be the terrible consequences of her indiscretion, 
and her eyes were again bedewed with tears. 

‘‘ Mon Dieu f and Madame Delaherche — how will it all 
end ? She bears me no love ; she is capable of telling the 
whole st®ry to my husband.” 

Henriette had recovered her composure. She dried her 
friend’s eyes, and made her rise from the lounge and arrange 
her disordered clothing. 

“ Listen, my dear ; I cannot bring myself to scold you, and 
yet you know what my sentiments must be. But I was so 
alarmed by the stories I heard about the Prussian, the business 
wore such an extremely ugly aspect, that this affair really 
‘Comes to me as a sort of relief by comparison. Cease weep- 
ing ; things may come out all right.” 

Her action was taken none too soon, for almost immediately 
Delaherche and his mother entered the room. He said that 
he had made up his mind to take the train for Brussels that 
afternoon and had been giving orders to have a carriage ready 
to carry him across the frontier into Belgium ; so he had come 
to say good-by to his wife. Then turning and addressing 
Henriette : 

“ You need have no further fears. M. de Gartlauben, just 
as he was going away, promised me he would attend to your 
uncle’s case, and although I shall not be here, my wife will 
keep an eye to it.” 


THE DOWNFALL, 


501 


Since Madame Delaherche had made her appearance in the 
apartment Gilberte had not once taken her anxious eyes from 
off her face. Would she speak, would she tell what she had 
seen, and keep her son from starting on his projected journey ? 
The elder lady, also, soon as she crossed the threshold, had 
bent her fixed gaze in silence on her daughter-in-law. Doubt- 
less her stern patriotism induced her to view the matter in 
somewhat the same light that Henriette had viewed it. Mon 
Dieii ! since it was that young man, that Frenchman who had 
fought so bravely, was it not her duty to forgive, even as she 
had forgiven once before, in Captain Beaudoin’s case ? A look 
of greater softness rose to her eyes ; she averted her head. 
Her son might go ; Edmond would be there to protect Gilberte 
against the Prussian. She even smiled faintly, she whose grim 
face had never once relaxed since the news of the victory at 
Coulmiers. 

“ Au revoir,'' she said, folding her son in her arms. “ Finish 
up your business quickly as you can and come back to us.” 

And she took herself slowly away, returning to the prison- 
like chamber across the corridor, where the colonel, with his 
dull gaze, was peering into the shadows that lay outside the 
disk of bright light which fell from the lamp. 

Henriette returned to Remilly that same evening, and one 
morning, three days afterward, had the pleasure to see Father 
Fouchard come walking into the house, as calmly as if he had 
merely stepped out to transact some business in the neighbor- 
hood. He took a seat by the table and refreshed himself with 
some bread and cheese, and to all the questions that were put 
to him replied with cool deliberation, like a man who had 
never seen anything to alarm him in his situation. What 
reason had he to be afraid ? He had done nothing wrong ; it 
was not he who had killed the Prussian, was it ? So he had 
just said to the authorities : Investigate the matter ; I know 
nothing about it.” And they could do nothing but release 
him, and the mayor as well, seeing they had no proofs against 
them. But the eyes of the crafty, sly old peasant gleamed with 
delight at the thought of how nicely he had pulled the wool 
over the eyes of those dirty blackguards, who were beginning 
to higgle with him over the quality of the meat he furnished 
to them. 

December was drawing near its end, and Jean insisted on 
going away. His leg was quite strong again, and the doctor 
announced that he was fit to go and join the army. This was 


502 


THE DOWNFALL. 


to Henriette a subject of profoundest sorrow, which she kept 
locked in her bosom as well as she was able. No tidings from 
Paris had reached them since the disastrous battle of Cham- 
pigny ; all they knew was that Maurice’s regiment had been 
exposed to a murderous fire and had suffered severely. Ever 
that deep, unbroken silence ; no letter, never the briefest line 
for them, when they knew that families in Raucourtand Sedan 
were receiving intelligence of their loved ones by circuitous 
ways. Perhaps the pigeon that was bringing them the so 
eagerly wished-for news had fallen a victim to some hungry 
bird of prey, perhaps the bullet of a Prussian had brought it 
to the ground at the margin of a wood. But the fear that 
haunted them most of all was that Maurice was dead ; the 
silence of the great city off yonder in the distance, uttering no 
cry in the mortal hug of the investment, was become to them 
in their agonized suspense the silence of death. They had 
abandoned all hope of tidings, and when Jean declared his 
settled purpose to be gone, Henriette only gave utterance to 
this stifled cry of despair : 

My God ! then all is ended, and I am to be left alone ! ” 

It was Jean’s desire to go and serve with the Army of the 
North, which had recently been re-formed under General 
Faidherbe. Now that General Manteuffel’s corps had moved 
forward to Dieppe there were three departments, cut off from 
the rest of France, that this army had to defend, le Nord, le 
Pas-de-Calais, and la Somme, and Jean’s plan, not a difficult 
one to carry into execution, was simply to make for Bouillon 
and thence complete his journey across Belgian territory. He 
knew that the 23d corps was being recruited, mainly from 
such old soldiers of Sedan and Metz as could be gathered to 
• the standards. He had heard it reported that General Faid- 
herbe was about to take the field, and had definitely appointed 
the next ensuing Sunday as the day of his departure, when 
news reached him of the battle of Pont-Noyelle, that drawn 
battle which came so near being a victory for the French. 

It was Dr. Dalichamp again in this instance who offered the 
services of his gig and himself as driver to Bouillon. The 
good man’s courage and kindness were boundless. At Rau- 
court, where typhus was raging, communicated by the Bavari- 
ans, there was not a house where he had not one or more 
patients, and this labor was additional to his regular attend- 
ance at the two hospitals at Raucourt and Remilly. His ardent 
patriotism, the impulse that prompted him to protest against 


THE DOWNFALL. 


503 


unnecessary barbarity, had twice led to his being arrested by 
the Prussians, only to be released on each occasion. He gave 
a little laugh of satisfaction, therefore, the morning he came 
with his vehicle to take up Jean, pleased -to be the instrument 
of assisting the escape of another of the victims of Sedan, those 
poor, brave fellows, as he called them, to whom he gave his 
professional services and whom he aided with his purse. Jean, 
who knew of Henriette’s straitened circumstances and had 
been suffering from lack of funds since his relapse, accepted 
gratefully the fifty francs that the doctor offered him for 
traveling expenses. 

Father Fouchard did things handsomely at the leave-taking, 
sending Silvine to the cellar for two bottles of wine and insist- 
ing that everyone should drink a glass to the extermination 
of the Germans. He was a man of importance in the country 
nowadays and had his “ plum " hidden away somewhere or 
other ; he could sleep in peace now that the francs-tireurs had 
disappeared, driven like wild beasts from their lair, and his 
sole wish was for a speedy conclusion of the war. He had 
even gone so far in one of his generous fits as to pay Prosper 
his wages in order to retain his services on the farm, which 
the young man had no thought of leaving. He touched 
glasses with Prosper, and also with Silvine, whom he at times 
was half inclined to marry, knowing what a treasure he had in 
his faithful, hard-working little servant ; but what was the 
use ? he knew she would never leave him, that she would still 
be there when Chariot should be grown and go in turn to 
serve his country as a soldier. And touching his glass to 
Henriette’s, Jean’s, and the doctor's, he exclaimed : 

“ Here’s to the health of you all ! May you all prosper and 
be no worse off than I am ! ” 

Henriette would not let Jean go away without accompany- 
ing him as far as Sedan. He was in citizen’s dress, wearing a 
frock coat and derby hat that the doctor had loaned him. The 
day was piercingly cold ; the sun’s ra3^s were reflected from a 
crust of glittering snow. Their intention had been to pass 
through the city without stopping, but when Jean learned that 
his old colonel was still at the Delaherches’ he felt an irresisti- 
ble desire to go and pay his respects to him, and at the same 
time thank the manufacturer for his many kindnesses. His 
visit'was destined to bring him an additional, a final sorrow, 
in that city of mournful memories. On reaching the structure 
in the Rue Maqua they found the household in a condition of 


504 THE DOWNFALL. 

the greatest distress and disorder, Gilberte wringing her hands, 
Madame Delaherche weeping great silent tears, while her son, 
who had come in from the factory, where work was gradually 
being resumed, uttered exclamations of surprise. The colonel 
had just been discovered, stone dead, lying exactly as he had 
fallen, in a heap on the floor of his chamber. The physician, 
who was summoned with all haste, could assign no cause for 
the sudden death ; there was no indication of paralysis or 
heart trouble. The colonel had been stricken down, and no 
one could tell from what quarter the blow came ; but the fol- 
lowing morning, when the room was thrown open, a piece of 
an old newspaper was found, lying on the carpet, that had been 
wrapped around a book and contained the account of the ^ 
surrender of Metz. 

“ My dear,” said Gilberte to Henriette, “ as Captain de 
Gartlauben was coming downstairs just now he removed his 
hat as he passed the door of the room where my uncle’s body 
is lying. Edmond saw it ; he’s an extremely well-bred man, 
don’t you think so ? ” 

In all their intimacy Jean had never yet kissed Henriette. 
Before resuming his seat in the gig with the doctor he en- 
deavored to thank her for all her devoted kindness, for having 
nursed and loved him as a brother, but somehow the words 
would not come at his command ; he opened his arms and, 
with a great sob, clasped her in a long embrace, and she, be- 
side herself with the grief of parting, returned his kiss. Then 
the horse started, he turned about in his seat, there was a 
waving of hands, while again and again two sorrowful voices 
repeated in choking accents : 

“ Farewell ! Farewell ! ” 

On her return to Remilly that evening Henriette reported 
for duty at the hospital. During the silent watches of the 
night she was visited by another convulsive attack of sobbing, 
and wept, wept as if her tears would never cease to flow, 
clasping her hands before her as if between them to strangle 
her bitter sorrow. 

VII. 

O N the day succeeding the battle of Sedan the mighty hosts 
of the two German armies, without the delay of a moment, 
commenced their march on Paris, the army of the Meuse com- 
ing in by the north through the valley of the Marne, while the 


THE DOWNFALL. 


505 


third army, passing the Seine at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, 
turned the city to the south and moved on Versailles ; and 
when, on that bright, warm September morning. General 
Ducrot, to whom had been assigned the command of the as 
yet incomplete 14th corps, determined to attack the latter 
force while it was marching by the flank, Maurice’s new regi- 
ment, the 115th, encamped in the woods to the left of Meudon, 
did not receive its orders to advance until the day was lost. 
A few shells from the enemy sufflced to do the work ; the 
panic started with a regiment of zouaves made up of raw re- 
cruits, and quickly spreading to the other troops, all were 
swept away in a headlong rout that never ceased until they 
were safe behind the walls of Paris, where the utmost conster- 
nation prevailed. Every position in advance of the southern 
line of fortifications was lost, and that evening the wires of 
the Western Railway telegraph, the city’s sole remaining 
means of communicating with the rest of France, were cut. 
Paris was cut off from the world. 

The condition of their affairs caused Maurice a terrible de- 
jection. Had the Germans been more enterprising they might 
have pitched their tents that night in the Place du Carrousel, 
but with the prudence of their race they had determined that 
the siege should be conducted according to rule and precept, 
and had already fixed upon the exact lines of investment, the 
position of the army of the Meuse being at the north, stretch- 
ing from Croissy to the Marne, through Epinay, the cordon of 
the third army at the south, from Chennevieres to Chatillon 
and Bougival, while general headquarters, with King William, 
Bismarck, and General von Moltke, were established at Ver- 
sailles. The gigantic blockade, that no one believed could 
be successfully completed, was an accomplished fact ; the 
city, with its girdle of fortifications eight leagues and a half 
in length, embracing fifteen forts and six detached redoubts, 
was henceforth to be transformed into a huge prison-pen. 
And the army of the defenders comprised only the 13th corps, 
commanded by General Vinoy, and the 14th, then in process 
of reconstruction under General Ducrot, the two aggregating 
an effective strength of eighty thousand men ; to which were 
to be added fourteen thousand sailors, fifteen thousand of the 
francs corps, and a hundred and fifteen thousand mobiles, not 
to mention the three hundred thousand National Guards dis- 
tributed among the sectional divisions of the ramparts. If 
this seems like a large force it must be remembered that there 


5o6 


THE DOWNFALL. 


were few seasoned and trained soldiers among its numbers. 
Men were constantly being drilled and equipped ; Paris was a 
great intrenched camp. The preparations for the defense 
went on from hour to hour with feverish haste ; roads were 
built, houses demolished within the military zone ; the two 
hundred siege guns and the twenty-five hundred pieces of 
lesser caliber were mounted in position, other guns were cast ; 
an arsenal, complete in every detail, seemed to spring from 
the earth under the tireless efforts of Dorian, the patriotic war 
minister. When, after the rupture of the negotiations at Fer- 
rieres, Jules Favre acquainted the country with M. von Bis- 
marck’s demands — the cession of Alsace, the garrison of 
Strasbourg to be surrendered, three milliards of indemnity — 
a cry of rage went up and the continuation of the war w^as 
demanded by acclaim as a condition indispensable to the 
country’s existence. Even with no hope of victory Paris must 
defend herself in order that France might live. 

On a Sunday toward the end of September Maurice was 
detailed to carry a message to the further end of the city, and 
what he witnessed along the streets he passed through filled 
him with new hope. Ever since the defeat of Chatillon it had 
seemed to him that the courage of the people was rising to a 
level with the great task that lay before them. Ah ! that Paris 
that he had known so thoughtless, so wayward, so keen in the 
pursuit of pleasure ; he found it now quite changed, simple, 
earnest, cheerfully brave, ready for every sacrifice. Everyone 
was in uniform ; there was scarce a head that was not decorated 
with the kepi of the National Guard. Business of every sort 
had come to a sudden standstill, as the hands of a watch 
cease to move when the mainspring snaps, and at the public 
meetings, among the soldiers in the guard-room, or where the 
crowds collected in the streets, there was but one subject of 
conversation, inflaming the hearts and minds of all — the de- 
termination to conquer. The contagious influence of illusion, 
scattered broadcast, unbalanced weaker minds ; the people 
were tempted to acts of generous folly by the tension to which 
they were subjected. Already there was a taint of morbid, 
nervous excitability in the air, a feverish condition in which 
men’s hopes and fears alike became distorted and exaggerated, 
arousing the worst passions of humanity at the slightest breath 
of suspicion. And Maurice was witness to a scene in the Rue 
des Martyrs that produced a profound impression on him ; 
the assault made by a band of infuriated men on a house from 


THE DOWNFALL. 


507 


which, at one of the upper windows, a bright light had been 
displayed all through the night, a signal, evidently, intended to^ 
reach the Prussians at Bellevue over the roofs of Paris. There 
were jealous citizens who spent all their nights on their house- 
tops, watching what was going on around them. The day before 
a poor wretch had had a narrow escape from drowning at the 
hands of the mob, merely because he had opened a map of the 
city on a bench in the Tuileries gardens and consulted it. 

And that epidemic of suspicion Maurice, who had always 
hitherto been so liberal and fair-minded, now began to feel the 
influence of in the altered views he was commencing to enter- 
tain concerning men and things. He had ceased to give way 
to despair, as he had done after the rout at Chatillon, when he 
doubted whether the French army would ever muster up suffi- 
cient manhood to fight again : the sortie of the 30th of Sep- 
tember on I’Hay and Chevilly, that of the 13th of October, in 
which the mobiles gained possession of Bagneux, and finally 
that of October 21, when his regiment captured and held for 
some time the park of la Malmaison, had restored to him all 
his confidence, that flame of hope that a spark sufficed to light 
and was extinguished as quickly. It was true the Prussians 
had repulsed them in every direction, but for all that the 
troops had fought bravely ; they might yet be victorious in the 
end. It was Paris now that was responsible for the young 
man’s gloomy forebodings, that great fickle city that at one 
moment was cheered by bright illusions and the next was sunk 
in deepest despair, ever haunted by the fear of treason in its 
thirst for victory. Did it not seem as if Trochu and Ducrot 
were treading in the footsteps of the Emperor and Marshal 
MacMahon and about to prove themselves incompetent lead- 
ers, the unconscious instruments of their country’s ruin ? The 
same movement that had swept away the Empire was now 
threatening the Government of National Defense, a fierce long- 
ing of the extremists to place themselves in control in order 
that they might save France by the methods of ’92 ; even now 
Jules Favre and his co-members were more unpopular than 
the old ministers of Napoleon III. had ever been. Since they 
would not fight the Prussians, they would do well to make way 
for others, for those revolutionists who saw an assurance of 
victory in decreeing the levee en masse in lending an ear to 
those visionaries who proposed to mine the earth beneath the 
Prussians’ feet, or annihilate them all by means of a new fash- 
ioned Greek fire. 


5o8 


THE DOWNFALL, 


Just previous to the 31st of October Maurice was more 
than usually a victim to this malady of distrust and barren 
speculation. He listened now approvingly to crude fancies 
that would formerly have brought a smile of contempt to his 
lips. Why should he not ? Were not imbecility and crime 
abroad in the land? Was it unreasonable to look for the mir- 
aculous when his world was falling in ruins about him ? Ever 
since the time he first heard the tidings of Froeschwiller, 
down there in front of Miilhausen, he had harbored a deep- 
seated feeling of rancor in his breast ; he suffered from Sedan 
as from a raw sore, that bled afresh with every new reverse ; 
the memory of their defeats, with all the anguish tHey en- 
tailed, was ever present to his mind ; body and mind enfeebled 
by long marches, sleepless nights, and lack of food, inducing a 
mental torpor that left them doubtful even if they were alive ; 
and the thought that so much suffering was to end in another 
and an irremediable disaster maddened him, made of that cul- 
tured man an unreflecting being, scarce higher in the scale 
than a very little child, swayed by each passing impulse of the 
moment. Anything, everything, destruction, extermination, 
rather than pay a penny of French money or yield an inch of 
French soil ! The revolution that since the first reverse had 
been at work within him, sweeping away the legend of Napo- 
leonic glory, the sentimental Bonapartism that he owed to the 
epic narratives of his grandfather, was now complete. He 
had ceased to be a believer in Republicanism, pure and sim- 
pie, considering the remedy not drastic enough ; he had begun 
to dabble in the theories of the extremists, he was a believer 
in the necessity of the Terror as the only means of ridding 
them of the traitors and imbeciles who were about to slay the 
country. And so it was that he was heart and soul with the 
insurgents when, on the 31st of October, tidings of disaster 
came pouring in on them in quick succession : the loss of 
Bourget, that had been captured from the enemy only a few 
days before by a dashing surprise ; M. Thiers’ return to Ver- 
sailles from his visit to the European capitals, prepared to 
treat for peace, so it was said, in the name of Napoleon HI.; 
and finally the capitulation of Metz, rumors of which had pre- 
viously been current and which was now confirmed, the last 
blow of the bludgeon, another Sedan, only attended by cir- 
cumstances of blacker infamy. And when he learned next 
day the occurrences at the Hotel de Ville — how the insurgents 
had been for a brief time successful, how the members of the 


THE DOWNFALL, 




Government of National Defense had been made prisoners 
and held until four o’clock in the morning, how finally the 
fickle populace, swayed at one moment by detestation for the 
ministers and at the next terrified by the prospect of a suc- 
cessful revolution, had released them — he was filled with regret 
at the miscarriage of the attempt, at the non-success of the 
Commune, which might have been their salvation, calling the 
people to arms, warning them of the country’s danger, arous- 
^ ing the cherished memories of a nation that wills it will not 
’ perish. Thiers did not dare even to set his foot in Paris, 
> where there was some attempt at illumination to celebrate the 
^ failure of the negotiations. 

[ The month of November was to Maurice a period of fever- 
•- ish expectancy. There were some conflicts of no great im- 
portance, in which he had no share. His regiment was in can- 
tonments at the time in the vicinity of Saint-Ouen, whence he 
\ made his escape as often as he could to satisfy his craving for 
news. Paris, like him, was awaiting the issue of events in 
\ eager suspense. The election of municipal officers seemed to 
• have appeased political passion for the time being, but a cir- 
^ cumstance that boded no good for the future was that those 
elected were rabid adherents of one or another party. And 
what Paris was,watching and praying for in that interval of re- 
pose was the grand sortie that was to bring them victoryand 
deliverance. As it had always been, so it was now ; confi- 
dence reigned everywhere: they would drive the Prussians 
from their position, would pulverize them, annihilate them. 
Great preparations were being made in the peninsula of Genne- 
villiers, the point where there was most likelihood of the op- 
eration being attended with success. Then one morning came 
the joyful tidings of the victory at Coulmiers ; Orleans was 
recaptured, the army of the Loire was marching to the relief 
of Paris, was even then, so it was reported, in camp at 
Etampes. The aspect of affairs was entirely changed ; all they 
had to do now was to go and effect a junction with it beyond 
'• the Marne. There had been a general reorganization of the 
- forces ; three armies had been created, one composed of the 
battalions of National Guards and commanded by General 
Clement Thomas, another, comprising the 13th and 14th corps, 
: to which were added a few reliable regiments, selected indis- 
^ criminately wherever they could be found, was to form the 
main column of attack under the lead of General Ducrot, while 
the third, intended to act as a reserve, was made up entirely 


THE DOWNFALL. 


510 

of mobiles and turned over to General Vinoy. And when 
Maurice laid him down to sleep in the wood of Vincennes on 
the night of the 28th of November, with his comrades of the 
115th, he was without a doubt of their success. The three 
corps of the second army were all there, and it was common | 
talk that their junction with the army of the Loire had been « 
fixed for the following day at Fontainebleau. Then ensued a |i 
series of mischances, the usual blunders arising from want of j 
foresight; a sudden rising of the river, which prevented the | 
engineers from laying the pontoon bridge; conflicting orders, 
which delayed the movement of the troops. The 115th was 
among the first regiments to pass the river on the following 
night, and in the neighborhood of ten o’clock, with Maurice in 
its ranks, it entered Champigny under a destructive fire. The 
young man was wild with excitement ; he fired so rapidly that 
his chassepot burned his fingers, notwithstanding the intense 
cold. His sole thought was to push onward, ever onward, 
surmounting every obstacle until they should join their broth- 
ers from the provinces over there across the river. But in 
front of Champigny and Bry the army fell up against the 
park walls of Coeuilly and Villiers, that the Prussians had con- 
verted into impregnable fortresses, more than a quarter of a 
mile in length. The men’s courage faltered, and after that 
the action went on in a half-hearted way ; the 3d corps was 
slow in getting up, the ist and 2d, unable to advance, 
continued for two days longer to hold Champigny, which they 
finally abandoned on the night of December 2, after their 
barren victory. The whole army retired to the wood of Vin- i 
cennes, where the men’s only shelter was the snow-laden 
branches of the trees, and Maurice, whose feet were frost-bit- 
ten, laid his head upon the cold ground and cried. 

The gloom and dejection that reigned in the city, after the 
failure of that supreme effort, beggars the powers of descrip- 
tion. The great sortie that had been so long in preparation, 
the irre.sistible eruption that was to be the deliverance of 
Paris, had ended in disappointment, and three days later 
came a communication from General von Moltke under a flag i 
of truce, announcing that the army of the Loire had been 
defeated and that the German flag again waved over Orleans. 
The girdle was being drawn tighter and tighter about the 
doomed city, all whose struggles were henceforth powerless 
to burst its iron fetters. But Paris seemed to accumulate 
fresh powers of resistance in the delirium of its despair. It 


THE DOWNFALL. 


5 ” 


was certain that ere long they would have to count famine 
among the number of their foes. As early as October the 
people had been restricted in their consumption of butcher’s 
meat, and in December, of all the immense herds of beeves and 
flocks of sheep that had been turned loose in the Bois de 
Boulogne, there was not a single creature left alive, and horses 
were being slaughtered for food. The stock of flour and 
wheat, with what was subsequently taken for the public use 
by forced sale, it was estimated would keep the city supplied 
with bread for four months. When the flour was all con- 
sumed mills were erected in the railway stations to grind the 
grain. The supply of coal, too, was giving out ; it was re- 
served to bake the bread and for use in the mills and arms 
factories. And Paris, her streets without gas and lighted by 
petroleum lamps at infrequent intervals; Paris, shivering 
under her icy mantle; Paris, to whom the authorities doled out 
her scanty daily ration of black bread and horse flesh, con- 
tinued to hope in spite of all, talking of Faidherbe in the 
north, of Chanzy on the Loire, of Bourbaki in the east, as if 
their victorious armies were already beneath the walls. The 
men and women who stood waiting, their feet in snow and 
slush, in interminable lines before the bakers’ and butchers’ 
shops, brightened up a bit at times at the news of some 
imaginary success of the army. After the discouragement of 
each defeat the unquenchable flame of their illusion would 
burst out and blaze more brightly than ever among those 
wretched people, whom starvation and every kind of suffering 
had rendered almost delirious. A soldier on the Place du 
Chateau d’Eau having spoken of surrender, the by-standers 
mobbed and were near killing him. While the army, its en- 
durance exhausted, feeling the end was near, called for peace, 
the populace clamored still for the sortie en masse., the torren- 
tial sortie, in which the entire population of the capital, men, 
women, and children, eveji, should take part, rushing upon 
the Prussians like water from a broken dyke and overwhelm- 
ing them by sheer force of numbers. 

And Maurice kept himself apart from his comrades, with an 
ever-increasing disgust for the life and duties of a soldier, 
that condemned him to inactivity and uselessness behind the 
ramparts of Mont-Valerien. He grasped every occasion to 
get away and hasten to Paris, where his heart was. It was in 
the midst of the great city’s thronging masses alone that he 
found rest and peace of mind; he tried to forced himself to 


512 


THE DOWNFALL. 


hope as they hoped. He often went to witness the departure 
of the balloons, which were sent up every other day from 
the station of the Northern Railway with a freight of de- 
spatches and carrier-pigeons. They rose when the ropes were 
cast loose and soon were lost to sight in the cheerless wintry 
sky, and all hearts were filled with anguish when the wind 
wafted them in the direction of the German frontier. Many 
of them were never heard of more. He had himself twice 
written to his sister Henriette, without ever learning if she had 
received his letters. The memory of his sister and of Jean, 
living as they did in that outer, shadowy world from which no 
tidings ever reached him now, was become so blurred and 
faint that he thought of them but seldom, as of affections that 
he had left behind him in some previous existence. The in- 
cessant conflict of despnir and hope in which he lived occupied 
all the faculties of his being too fully to leave room for mere 
human feelings. Then, too, in the early days of January he 
was goaded to the verge of frenzy by the action of the enemy 
in shelling the district on the left bank of the river. He had 
come to credit the Prussians with reasons of humanity for 
their abstention, which was in fact due simply to the difficul- 
ties they experienced in bringing up their guns and getting 
them in position. Now that a shell had killed two little girls 
at the Val-de-Grace, his scorn and hatred knew no bounds for 
those barbarous ruffians who murdered little children and 
threatened to burn the libraries and museums. After the first 
days of terror, however, Paris had resumed its life of dogged, 
unfaltering heroism. 

Since the reverse of Champigny there had been but one 
other attempt, ending in disaster like the rest, in the direction 
of Bourget; and the evening when the plateau of Avron was 
evacuated, under the fire of the heavy siege artillery battering 
away at the forts, Maurice was a sharer in the rage and exas- 
peration that possessed the entire city. The growing unpop- 
ularity that threatened to hurl from power General Trochu 
and the Government of National Defense was so augmented 
by this additional repulse that they were compelled to attempt 
a supreme and hopeless effort. What, did they refuse the 
services of the three hundred thousand National Guards, who 
from the beginning had been demanding their share in the 
peril and in the victory ! This time it was to be the torrential 
sortie that had all along been the object of the popular clamor; 
Paris was to throw open its dikes and drown the Prussians 


THE DOWNFALL. 


513 


beneath the on-pouring waves of its children. Notwithstand- 
ing the certainty of a fresh defeat, there was no way of avoid- 
ing a demand that had its origin in such patriotic motives; but 
in order to limit the slaughter as far as possible, the chiefs 
determined to employ, in connection with the regular army, 
only the fifty-nine mobilized battalions of the National Guard. 
The day preceding the 19th of January resembled some great 
public holiday ; an immense crowd gathered on the boule- 
vards and in the Champs-Ely.sees to witness the departing 
regiments, which marched proudly by, preceded by their 
bands, the men thundering out patriotic airs. Women and 
children followed them along the sidewalk, men climbed on the 
benches to wish them Godspeed. The next morning the 
entire population ,of the city hurried out to the Arc de 
Triomphe, and it was almost frantic with delight when at an 
early hour news came of the capture of Montretout ; the tales 
that were told of the gallant behavior of the National Guard 
sounded like epics; the Prussians had been beaten all along 
the line, the French would occupy Versailles before night. 
As a natural result the consternation was proportionately great 
when, at nightfall, the inevitable defeat became known. 
While the left wing was seizing Montretout the center, which 
had succeeded in carrying the outer wall of Buzanval Park, 
had encountered a second inner wall, before which it broke. 
A thaw had set in, the roads were heavy from the effects of a 
fine, drizzling rain, and the guns, those guns that had been 
cast by popular subscription and were to the Parisians as the 
apple of their eye, could not get up. On the right General 
Ducrot’s column was tardy in getting into action and saw 
nothing of the fight. Further effort was useless, and General 
Trochu was compelled to order a retreat. Montretout was 
abandoned, and Saint-Cloud as well, which the Prussians 
burned, and when it became fully dark the horizon of Paris 
was illuminated by the conflagration. 

Maurice himself this time felt that the end was come. For 
four hours he had remained in the park of Buzanval with the 
National Guards under the galling fire from the Prussian in- 
trenchments, and later, when he got back to the city, he 
spoke of their courage in the highest terms. It was undis- 
puted that the Guards fought bravely on that occasion ; after 
that was it not self-evident that all the disasters of the army 
were to be attributed solely to the imbecility and treason of 
its leaders } In the Rue de Rivoli he encountered bands of 


THE DOWNFALL. 


514 

men shouting: “Hurrah for the Commune ! down with Trochu! ” 
It was the leaven of revolution beginning to work again in the 
popular mind, a fresh outbreak of public opinion, and so for- 
midable this time that the Government of National Defense, 
in order to preserve its own existence, thought it necessary to 
compel General Trochu’s resignation and put General Vinoy 
in his place. On that same day Maurice, chancing to enter 
a hall in Belleville where a public meeting was going on, again 
heard the levee en inasse demanded with clamorous shouts. 
He knew the thing to be chimerical, and yet it set his heart a- 
beating more rapidly to see such a determined will to con- 
quer. When all is ended, is it not left us to attempt the im- 
possible ? All that night he dreamed of miracles. 

Then a long week went by, during whi«h Paris lay agoniz- 
ing without a murmur. The shops had ceased to open their 
doors ; in the lonely streets the infrequent wayfarer never met 
a carriage. Forty thousand horses had been eaten ; dogs, cats 
and rats were now luxuries, commanding a high price. Ever 
since the supply of wheat had given out the bread was made 
from rice and oats, and was black, damp, and slimy, and hard 
to digest ; to obtain the ten ounces that constituted a day’s 
ration involved a wait, often of many hours, in line before the 
bake-house. Ah, the sorrowful spectacle it was, to see those 
poor women shivering in the pouring rain, their feet in the 
ice-cold mud and water ! the misery and heroism of the great 
city that would not surrender ! The death rate had increased 
threefold ; the theiiters were converted into hospitals. As 
soon as it became dark the quarters where luxury and vice 
had formerly held carnival were shrouded in funereal blackness, 
like the faubourgs of some accursed city, smitten by pestilence. 
And in that silence, in that obscurity, naught was to be heard 
save the unceasing roar of the cannonade and the crash of 
bursting shells, naught to be seen save the red flash of the guns 
illuminating the wintry sky. 

On the 28th of January the news burst on Paris like a 
thunderclap that for the past two days negotiations had been 
going on, between Jules Favre and M. von Bismarck, looking 
to an armistice, and at the same time it learned that there was 
bread for only ten days longer, a space of time that would 
hardly suffice to revictual the city. Capitulation was become 
.a matter of material necessity. Paris, stupefied by the hard 
truths that were imparted to it at that late day, remained 
sullenly silent and made no sign. Midnight of that day heard 


THE DOWNFALL. 


515 


the last shot from the German guns, and on the 29th, when 
the Prussians had taken possession of the forts, Maurice went 
with his regiment into the camp that was assigned them over by 
Montrouge, within the fortifications. The life that he led there 
was an aimless one, made up of idleness and feverish unrest. 
Discipline was relaxed ; the soldiers did pretty much as they 
pleased, waiting in inactivity to be dismissed to their homes. 
He, however, continued to hang around the camp in a semi- 
dazed condition, moody, nervous, irritable, prompt to take 
offense on the most trivial provocation. He read with avidity 
all the revolutionary newspapers he could lay hands on ; that 
three weeks’ armistice, concluded solely for the purpose of 
allowing France to elect an assembly that should ratify the 
conditions of peace, appeared to him a delusion and a snare, 
another and a final instance of treason. Even if Paris were 
forced to capitulate, he was with Gambetta for the prosecution 
of the war in the north and on the line of the Loire. He over- 
flowed with indignation at the disaster of Bourbaki’s army in 
the east, which had been compelled to throw itself into Switzer- 
land, and the result of the elections made him furious : it 
would be just as he had always predicted ; the base, cowardly 
provinces, irritated by Paris’ protracted resistance, would in- 
sist on peace at any price and restore the monarchy while the 
Prussian guns were still directed on the city. After the first 
sessions, at Bordeaux, Thiers, elected in twenty-six departments 
and constituted by unanimous acclaim the chief executive, 
appeared to his eyes a monster of iniquity, the father of lies, 
a man capable of every crime. The terms of the peace con- 
cluded by that assemblage of monarchists seemed to him to 
put the finishing touch to their infamy, his blood boiled merely 
at the thought of those hard conditions : an indemnity of five 
milliards, Metz to be' given up, Alsace to be ceded, France’s 
blood and treasure pouring from the gaping wound, thence- 
forth incurable, that was thus opened in her flank. 

Late in February Maurice, unable to endure his situation 
longer, made up his mind he would desert. A stipulation of 
the^^treaty provided that the troops encamped about Paris 
should be disarmed and returned to their abodes, but he did 
not wait to see it enforced ; it seemed to him that it would 
break his heart to leave brave, glorious Paris, which only 
famine had been able to subdue, and so he bade farewell to 
armv life and hired for himself a small furnished room next 
the roof of a tall apartment house in the Rue des Orties, at 


5i6 


THE DOWNFALL. 


the top of the butte des Moulins, whence he had an outlook 
over the immense sea of roofs from the Tuileries to the Bastille. 
An old friend, whom he had known while pursuing his law 
studies, had loaned him a hundred francs. In addition to that 
he had caused his name to be inscribed on the roster of a 
battalion of National Guards as soon as he was settled in his 
new quarters, and his pay, thirty sous a day, would be enough 
to keep him alive. The idea of going to the country and 
there leading a tranquil life, unmindful of what was happening 
the country, filled him with horror ; the letters even that he 
received from his sister Henriette, to whom he had written 
immediately after the armistice, annoyed him by their tone of 
entreaty, their ardent solicitations that he would come home 
to Remilly and rest. He refused point-blank ; he would go 
later on when the Prussians should be no longer there. 

And so Maurice went on leading an idle, vagabondish sort 
of life, in a state of constant feverish agitation. He had 
ceased to be tormented by hunger ; he devoured the^first white 
bread he got with infinite gusto ; but the city was a prison 
still : German guards were posted at the gates, and no one was 
allowed to pass them until he had been made to give an account 
of himself. There had been no resumption of social life as 
yet ; industry and trade were at a standstill ; the people lived 
from day to day, watching to see what would happen next, 
doing nothing, simply vegetating in the bright sunshine of the 
spring that was now coming on apace. During the siege there 
had been the military service to occupy men’s minds and tire 
their limbs, while now the entire population, isolated from all 
the world, had suddenly been reduced to a state of utter 
stagnation, mental as well as physical. He did as others did, 
loitering his time away from morning till night, living in an 
atmosphere that for months had been vitiated by the germs 
arising from the half-crazed mob. He read the newspapers 
and was an assiduous frequenter of public meetings, where he 
would often smile and shrug his shoulders at the rant and 
fustian of the speakers, but nevertheless would go away with 
the most ultra notions teeming in his brain, ready to engage 
in any desperate undertaking in the defense of what he con- 
sidered truth and justice. And sitting by the window in his 
little bedroom, and looking out over the city, he would still 
beguile himself with dreams of victory ; would tell himself that 
France and the Republic might yet be saved, so long as the 
treaty of peace remained unsigned. 


THE DOWNFALL. 


517 


The ist of March was the day fixed for the entrance of the 
Prussians into Paris, and a long-drawn howl of wrath and ex- 
ecration went up from every heart. Maurice never attended 
a meeting now that he did not hear Thiers, the Assembly, 
even the men of September 4th themselves, cursed and re- 
viled because they had not spared the great heroic city that 
crowning degradation. He was himself one night aroused to 
such a pitch of frenzy that he took the floor and shouted that 
it was the duty of all Paris to go and die on the ramparts 
rather than suffer the entrance of a single Prussian. It was 
quite natural that the spirit of insurrection should show itself 
thus, should bud and blossom in the full light of day, among 
that populace that had first been maddened by months of dis- 
tress and famine and then had found itself reduced to a con- 
dition of idleness that afforded it abundant leisure to brood 
on the suspicions and fancied wrongs that were largely the 
product of its own disordered imagination. It was one of 
those moral crises that have been noticed as occurring after 
every great siege, in which excessive patriotism, thwarted in 
its aims and aspirations, after having fired men’s minds, de- 
generates into a blind rage for vengeance and destruction. 
The Central Committee, elected by delegates from the National 
Guard battalions, had protested against any attempt to dis- 
arm their constituents. Then came an immense popular 
demonstration on the Place de la Bastille, where there were 
red flags, incendiary speeches and a crowd that overflowed 
the square, the affair ending with the murder of a poor inof- 
fensive agent of police, who was bound to a plank, thrown 
into the canal, and then stoned to death. And forty-eight 
hours later, during the night of .the 26th of February, Maurice, 
awakened by the beating of the long roll and the sound of the 
tocsin, beheld bands of men and women streaming along the 
Boulevard des Batignolles and dragging cannon after them. 
He descended to the street, and laying hold of the rope of a 
gun along with some twenty others, was told how the people 
had gone to the Place Wagram and taken the pieces in order 
that the Assemby might not deliver them to the [Prussians. 
There were seventy of them ; teams were wanting, but the 
strong arms of the mob, tugging at the ropes and pushing at 
the limbers and axles, finally brought them to the summit of 
Montmartre with the mad impetuosity of a barbarian horde 
assuring the safety of its idols. When on IVIarch i the Prus- 
sians took possession of the quarter of the Champs Elysees, 


Si8 


THE DO WM FA EL. 


which they were to occupy only for one day, keeping them- 
selves strictly within the limits of the barriers, Paris looked on 
in sullen silence, its streets deserted, its houses closed, the 
entire city lifeless and shrouded in its dense veil of mourning. 

I'wo weeks more went by, during which Maurice could 
hardly have told how he spent his time while awaiting the 
approach of the momentous events of which he had a distinct 
presentiment. Peace was concluded definitely at last, the 
Assembly was to commence its regular sessions at Versailles 
on the 2 oth of the month ; and yet for him nothing was con- 
cluded : he felt that they were ere long to witness the beginning 
of a dreadful drama of atonement. On the i8th of March, as 
he was about to leave his room, he received a letter from 
Henriette urging him to come and join her at Remilly, coupled 
with a playful threat that she would come and carry him off 
with her if he delayed too long to afford her that great pleasure. 
Then she went on to speak of Jean, concerning whose affairs 
she was extremely anxious ; she told how, after leaving her 
late in December to join the Army of the North, he had been 
seized with a low fever that had kept him long a prisoner in a 
Belgian hospital, and only the preceding week he had written 
her that he was about to start for Paris, notwithstanding his 
enfeebled condition, where he was determined to seek active 
service once again. Henriette closed her letter by begging 
her brother to give her a faithful account of how matters were 
with Jean as soon as he should have seen him. Maurice laid 
the open letter before him on the table and sank into a con- 
fused revery. Henriette, Jean ; his sister whom he loved so 
fondly, his brother in suffering and privation; how absent from 
his daily thoughts had those dear ones been since the tempest 
had been raging in his bosom ! He aroused himself, however, 
and as his sister advised him that she had been unable to give 
Jean the number of the house in the Rue des Orties, promised 
himself to go that very day to the office where the regimental 
records were kept and hunt up his friend. But he had barely 
got beyond his door and was crossing the Rue Saint-Honore 
when he encountered two fellow-soldiers of his battalion, who 
gave him an account of what had happened that morning and 
during the night before at Montmartre, and the -three men 
started off on a run toward the scene of the disturbance. 

Ah, that day of the i8th of March, the elation and enthu- 
siasm that it aroused in Maurice ! In after days he could never 
remember clearly what he said and did. First he beheld him- 


THE DOWNFALL. 


519 


self dimly, as through a veil of mist, convulsed with rage at 
the recital of how the troops had attempted, in the darkness 
and quiet that precedes the dawn, to disarm Paris by seizing 
the guns on Montmartre heights. It was evident that Thiers, 
who had arrived from Bordeaux, had been meditating the blow 
for the last two days, in order that the Assembly at Versailles 
might proceed without fear to proclaim the monarchy. Then 
the scene shifted, and he was on the ground at Montmartre 
itself — about nine o’clock it was — fired by the narrative of the 
people’s victory : how the soldiery had come sneaking up in 
the darkness, how the delay in bringing up the teams had 
given the National Guards an opportunity to fly to arms, the 
troops, having no heart to fire on women and children, revers- 
ing their muskets and fraternizing with the people. Then he 
had wandered desultorily about the city, wherever chance 
directed his footsteps, and by midday had satisfied himself 
that the Commune was master of Paris, without even the neces- 
sity of striking a blow, for Thiers and the ministers had de- 
camped from their quarters in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 
the entire government was flying in disorder to Versailles, the 
thirty thousand troops had been hastily conducted from the 
city, leaving more than five thousand deserters from their 
numbers along the line of their retreat. And later, about 
half-past five in the afternoon, he could recall being at a corner 
of the exterior boulevard in the midst of a mob of howling 
lunatics, listening without the slightest evidence of disapproval 
to the abominable story of the murder of Generals Lecomte 
and Clement Thomas. Generals, they called themselves ; 
fine generals, they ! the leaders they had had at Sedan rose 
before his memory, voluptuaries and imbeciles ; one more, one 
less, what odds did it make ! And the remainder of the day 
passed in the same state of half-crazed excitement, which 
served to distort everything to his vision ; it was an insurrec- 
tion that the very stones of the streets seemed to have favored, 
spreading, swelling, finally becoming master of all at a stroke 
in the unforeseen fatality of its triumph, and at ten o’clock in 
the evening delivering the Hotel de Ville over to the members 
of the Central Committee, who were greatly surprised to find 
themselves there. 

There was one memory, however, that remained very dis- 
tinct to Maurice’s mind : his unexpected meeting with Jean. 
It was three days now since the latter had reached Paris, with- 
out a sou in his pocket, emaciated and enfeebled by the ill- 


520 


THE DOWNFALL. 


ness that had consigned him to a hospital in Brussels and 
kept him there two months, and having had the luck to fall in 
with Captain Ravaud, who had commanded a company in the 
io6th, he had enlisted at once in his former acquaintance’s 
new company in the 124th. His old rank as corporal had 
been restored to him, and that evening he had just left the 
Prince Eugene barracks with his squad on his way to the left 
bank, where the entire army was to concentrate, when a mob 
collected about his men and stopped them as they were pass- 
ing along the boulevard Saint-Martin. The insurgents yelled 
and shouted, and evidently were preparing to disarm his little 
band. With perfect coolness he told them to let him alone, 
that he had no business with them or their affairs ; all he 
wanted was to obey his orders without harming anybody. 
Then a cry of glad surprise was heard, and Maurice, who had 
chanced to pass that way, threw himself on the other’s neck 
and gave him a brotherly hug. 

“ What, is it you ! My sister wrote me about you. And 
just think, no later than this very morning I was going to look 
you up at the war office ! ” 

Jean’s eyes were dim with big- tears of pleasure. 

“ Ah, my dear lad, how glad I am to see you once more ! 
I have been looking for you, too, but where could a fellow ex- 
pect to find you in this confounded great big place ? ” 

To the crowd, continuing their angry muttering, Maurice 
turned and said : 

“ Let me talk to them, citizens ! They’re good fellows ; I’ll 
answer for them.” He took his friend’s hands in his, and 
lowering his voice : “ You’ll join us, won’t you ? ” 

Jean’s face was the picture of surprise. “ How, join you ? 
I don’t understand.” Then for a moment he listened while 
Maurice railed against the government, against the army, 
raking up old sores and recalling all their sufferings, telling 
how at last they were going to be masters, punish dolts and 
cowards and preserve the Republic. And as he struggled to 
get the problems the other laid before him through his brain, 
the tranquil face of the unlettered peasant was clouded with 
an increasing sorrow. “ Ah, no ! ah, no ! my boy. I 
can’t join you if it’s for that fine work you want me. 
My captain told me to go with my men to Vaugirard, and 
there I’m going. In spite of the devil and his angels I will 
go there. That’s natural enough ; you ought to know how it 
is yourself.” He laughed with frank simplicity and added : 


THE DOWNFALL. 


521 


“ It’s you who’ll come along with us.” 

But Maurice released his hands with an angry gesture of 
dissent, and thus they stood for some seconds, face to face, 
one under the influence of that madness that was sweeping all 
Paris off its feet, the malady that had been bequeathed to 
them by the crimes and follies of the late reign, the other 
strong in his ignorance and practical common sense, untainted 
as yet because he had grown up apart from the contaminating 
principle, in the land where industry and thrift were honored. 
They were brothers, however, none the less; the tie that united 
them was strong, and it was a pang to them both when the 
crowd suddenly surged forward and parted them. 

Au revoir^ Maurice!” 

Au revoir, Jean ! ” 

It was a regiment, the 79th, debouching from a side street, 
that -had caused the movement among the crowd, forcing the 
rioters back to the sidewalks by the weight of its compact 
column, closed in mass. There was some hooting, but no one 
ventured to bar the way against the soldier boys, who went 
by at double time, well under control of their officers. An 
opportunity was afforded the little squad of the 124th to make 
their escape, and they followed in the wake of the larger 
body. 

Ate revoir^ Jean ! ” 

“ Au revoh'y Maurice ! ” 

They waved their hands once more in a parting salute, 
yielding to the fatality that decreed their separation in that 
manner, but each none the less securely seated in the other’s 
heart. 

The extraordinary occurrences of the next and the succeed- 
ing days crowded on the heels of one another in such swift 
sequence that Maurice had scarcely time to think. On the 
morning of the 19th Paris awoke without a government, more 
surprised than frightened to learn that a panic during the 
night had sent army, ministers, and all the public service 
scurrying away to Versailles, and as the weather happened to 
be fine on that magnificent March Sunday, Paris stepped un- 
concernedly down into the streets to have a look at the barri- 
cades. A great white poster, bearing the signature of the 
Central Committee and convoking the people for the com- 
munal elections, attracted attention by the moderation of its 
language, although much surprise was expressed at seeing it 
signed by names so utterly unknown. There can be no doubt 


522 


THE DOWNFALL. 


that at this incipient stage of the Commune Paris, in the bit- 
ter memory of what it had endured, in the suspicions by which 
it was haunted, and in its unslaked thirst for further fighting, 
was against Versailles. It was a condition of absolute 
anarchy, moreover, the conflict for the moment being between 
the mayors and the Central Committee, the former fruitlessly 
attempting to introduce measures of conciliation, while the 
latter, uncertain as yet to what extent it could rely on the 
federated National Guard, continued modestly to lay claim to 
no higher title than that of defender of the municipal liberties. 
The shots fired against the pacific demonstration in the Place 
Vendome, the few corpses whose blood reddened the pave- 
ments, first sent a thrill of terror circulating through the city. 
And while these things were going on, while the insurgents 
were taking definite possession of the ministries and all the 
public buildings, the agitation, rage and alarm prevailing at 
Versailles were extreme, the government there hastening to 
get together sufficient troops to repel the attack which they 
felt sure they should not have to wait for long. The steadiest 
and most reliable divisions of the armies of the North and of 
the Loire were hurried forward. Ten days sufficed to collect a 
force of nearly eighty thousand men, and the tide of returning 
confidence set in so strongly that on the 2d of April two divi- 
sions opened hostilities by taking from the federates Puteaux 
and Courbevoie. 

It was not until the day following the events just mentioned 
that Maurice, starting out with his battalion to effect the con- 
quest of Versailles, beheld, amid the throng of misty, feverish 
memories that rose to his poor wearied brain, Jean's melan- 
choly face as he had seen it last, and seemed to hear the tones 
of his last mournful au revoir. The military operations of the 
Versaillese had filled the National Guard with alarm and in- 
dignation ; three columns, embracing a total strength of fifty 
thousand men, had gone storming that morning through Bou- 
gival and Meudon on their way to seize the monarchical 
Assembly and Thiers, the murderer. It was the torrential 
sortie that had been demanded with such insistence dur- 
ing the siege, and Maurice asked himself where he should ever 
see Jean again unless among the dead lying on the field of 
battle down yonder. But it was not long before he knew the 
result ; his battalion had barely reached the Plateau des Ber- 
geres, on the road to Reuil, when the shells from Mont-Vale- 
rien came tumbling among the ranks. Universal consterna^ 


THE DOWNFALL. 


523 


tion reigned ; some had supposed that the fort was held by 
their comrades of the Guard, while others averred that the 
commander had promised solemnly to withhold his fire. A 
wild panic seized upon the men ; the battalions broke and 
rushed back to Paris fast as their legs would let them, while 
the head of the column, diverted by a flanking movement of 
General Vinoy, was driven back on Reuil and cut to pieces 
there. 

Then Maurice, who had escaped unharmed from the slaugh- 
ter, his nerves still quivering with the fury that had inspired 
him on the battlefield, was filled with fresh detestation for 
that so-called government of law and order which always al- 
lowed itself to be beaten by the Prussians, and could only 
muster up a little courage when it came to oppressing Paris. 
And the German armies were still there, from Saint-Denis to 
Charenton, watching the shameful spectacle of internecine 
conflict ! Thus, in the fierce longing for vengeance and de- 
struction that animated him, he could not do otherwise than 
sanction the first measures of communistic violence, the build- 
ing of barricades in the streets and public squares, the arrest 
of the archbishop, some priests, and former officeholders, who 
were to be held as hostages. The atrocities that distinguished 
either side in that horrible conflict were already beginning to 
manifest themselves, Versailles shooting the prisoners it made, 
Paris retaliating with a decree that for each one of its soldiers 
murdered three hostages should forfeit their life. The horror 
of it, that fratricidal conflict, that wretched nation completing 
the work of destruction by devouring its own children ! And 
the little reason that remained to Maurice, in the ruin of all 
the things he had hitherto held sacred, was quickly dissipated 
in the whirlwind of blind fury that swept all beforejit. In his 
eyes the Commune was to be the avenger of all the wrongs 
they had suffered, the liberator, coming with fire and sword to 
purify and punish. He was not quite clear in mind about it 
all, but remembered having read how great and flourishing the 
old free cities had become, how wealthy provinces had feder- 
ated and imposed their law upon the world. If Paris should 
be victorious he beheld her, crowned with an aureole of glory, 
building up a new France, where liberty and justice should be 
the watchwords, organizing a new society, having first swept 
away the rotten debris of the old. It was true that when the 
result of the elections became known he was somewhat sur- 
prised by the strange mixture of moderates, revolutionists, and 


524 


THE DOWNFALL. 


socialists of every sect and shade to whom the accomplish- 
ment of the great work was intrusted ; he was acquainted with 
several of the men and knew them to be of extremely medi- 
ocre abilities. Would not the strongest among them come in 
collision and neutralize one another amid the clashing ideas 
which they represented ? But on the day when the ceremony 
of the inauguration of the Commune took place before the 
Hotel de Ville, amid the thunder of artiller)^ and trophies and 
red banners floating in the air, his boundless hopes again got 
the better of his fears and he ceased to doubt. Among the 
lies of some and the unquestioning faith of others, the illusion 
started into life again with renewed vigor, in the acute crisis 
of the malady raised to paroxysmal pitch. 

During the entire month of April Maurice was on duty in 
the neighborhood of Neuilly. The gentle warmth of the early 
spring had brought out the blossoms on the lilacs, and the 
fighting was conducted among the bright verdure of the gar- 
dens ; the National Guards came into the city at night with 
bouquets of flowers stuck in their muskets. The troops col- 
lected at Versailles were now so numerous as to warrant their 
formation in two armies, a first line under the orders of Mar- 
shal MacMahon and a reserve commanded by General Vinoy. 
The Commune had nearly a hundred thousand National Guards 
mobilized and as many more on the rosters who could be called 
out at short notice, but fifty thousand were as many as they 
ever brought into the field at one time. Day b}'’ day the plan of 
attack adopted by the Versaillese became more manifest: after 
occupying Neuilly they had taken possession of the Chateau 
of Becon and soon after of Asnieres, but these movements were 
simply to make the investment more complete, for their inten- 
tion was to enter the city by the Point-du-Jour soon as the 
converging fire from Mont-Valerien and Fort dTssy should 
enable them to carry the rampart there. Mont-Valerien was 
theirs already, and they were straining every nerve to capture 
Issy, utilizing the works abandoned by the Germans for the 
purpose Since the middle of April the fire of musketry and 
artillery had been incessant ; at Levallois and Neuilly the 
fighting never ceased, the skirmishers blazing away uninter- 
ruptedly, by night as well as by da}'-. Heavy guns, mounfed 
on armored cars, moved to and fro on the Belt Railway, shell- 
ing Asnieres over the roofs of Levallois. It was at Vanves 
and Issy, however, that the cannonade was fiercest ; it shook 
the windows of Paris as the siege had done when it was at its 


THE DOWNFALL. 


525 

height. And when finally, on the 9th of May, Fort d’Issy was 
obliged to succumb and fell into the hands of the Versailles 
army the defeat of the Commune was assured, and in their 
frenzy of panic the leaders resorted to most detestable meas- 
ures. 

Maurice favored the creation of a Committee of Public 
Safety. The warnings of history came to his mind ; had not 
the hour struck for adopting energetic methods if they wished 
to save the country ? There was but one of their barbarities 
that really pained him, and that was the destruction of the 
Venddme column ; he reproached himself for the feeling as 
being a childish weakness, but his grandfather’s voice still 
sounded in his ears repeating the old familiar tales of Marengo, 
Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau, Friedland, Wagram, the Moskowa — 
those epic narratives that thrilled his pulses yet as often as he 
thought of them. But that they should demolish the house of 
the murderer Thiers, that they should retain the hostages as a 
guarantee and a menace, was not that right and just when the 
Versaillese were unchaining their fury on Paris, bombarding 
it, destroying its edifices, slaughtering women and children 
with their shells ? As he saw the end of his dream approach- 
ing dark thoughts of ruin and destruction filled his mind. If 
their ideas of justice and retribution were not to prevail, if 
they were to be crushed out of them with their life-blood, then 
perish the world, swept away in one of those cosmic upheavals 
that are the beginning of a new life. Let Paris sink beneath 
the waves, let it go up in smoke and flame, like a gigantic 
funeral pyre, sooner than let it be again delivered over to its 
former state of vice and misery, to that old vicious social sys- 
tem of abominable injustice. And he dreamed another dark, 
terrible dream, the great city reduced to ashes, naught to be 
seen on either side the Seine but piles of smoldering ruins, the 
festering wound purified and healed with fire, a catastrophe 
without a name, such as had never been before, whence should 
arise anew race. Wild stories were everywhere circulated, which 
interested him intensely, of the mines that were driven under 
all the quarters of the city, the barrels of powder with which 
the catacombs were stuffed, the monuments and public buildings 
readytobe blown into the air ata moment’s notice; and all were 
connected by electric wires in such a way that a single spark would 
suffice to set them off; there were great stores of inflammable sub- 
stances, too, especially petroleum, with which the streets and 
avenues were to be converted into seething lakes of flame. The 


526 


THE DOWNFALL. 


Commune had sworn that should the Versaillese enter the city 
not one of them would ever get beyond the barricades that closed 
the ends of the streets ; the pavements would yawn, the houses 
would sink in ruins, Paris would go up in flames, and bury 
assailants and assailed under its. ashes. 

And if Maurice solaced himself with these crazy dreams, it 
was because of his secret discontent with the Commune itself. 
He had lost all confidence in its members, he felt it was inef- 
ficient, drawn this way and that by so many conflicting ele- 
ments, losing its head and becoming purposeless and driveling 
as it saw the near approach of the peril with which it was 
menaced. Of the social reforms it had pledged itself to it had 
not been able to accomplish a single one, and it was now quite 
certain that it would leave behind it no great work to perpet- 
uate its name. But what more than all beside was gnawing at 
its vitals was the rivalries by which it was distracted, the cor- 
roding suspicion and distrust in which each of its members 
lived. For some time past many of them, the more moderate 
and the timid, had ceased to attend its sessions. The others 
shaped their course day by day in accordance with events, 
trembling at the idea of a possible dictatorship ; they had 
reached that point where the factions of revolutionary assem- 
blages exterminate one another by way of saving the country. 
Cluzeret had become suspected, then Dombrowski, and 
Rossel was about to share their fate. Delescluze, appointed 
Civil Delegate at War, could do nothing of his own volition, 
notwithstanding his great authority. And thus the grand so- 
cial effort that they had had in view wasted itself in the ever- 
widening isolation about those men whose power had become 
a nullity, whose actions were the result of their despair. 

In Paris there was an increasing feeling of terror. Paris, ir- 
ritated at first against Versailles, shivering at the recollection 
of what it had suffered during the siege, was now breaking 
away from the Commune. The compulsory enrollment, the 
decree incorporating every man under forty in the National 
Guard, had angered the more sedate citizens and been the 
means of bringing about a general exodus : men in disguise 
and provided with forged papers of Alsatian citizenship made 
their escape by way of Saint-Denis ; others let themselves down 
into the moat in the darkness of the night with ropes and lad- 
ders. The wealthy had long since taken their departure. 
None of the factories and workshops had opened their doors ; 
trade and commerce there was none ; there was no employment 


THE DOWNFALL. 


527 


for labor ; the life of enforced idleness went on amid the 
alarmed expectancy of the frightful denouement that everyone 
felt could not be far away. And the people depended for their 
daily bread on the pay of the National Guards, that dole of 
thirty sous that was paid from the millions extorted from the 
Bank of France, the thirty sous for the sake of which alone 
many men were wearing the uniform, which had been one of 
the primary causes and the raison d'Hre of the insurrection. 
Whole districts were deserted, the shops closed, the house- 
fronts lifeless. In the bright May sunshine *that flooded the 
empty streets the few pedestrians beheld nothing moving save 
the barbaric display of the burial of some federates killed in 
action, the funeral train where no priest walked, the hearse 
draped with red flags, followed by a crowd of men and women 
bearing bouquets of immortelles. The churches were closed 
and did duty each evening as political club-rooms. The revo- 
lutionary journals alone were hawked about the streets ; the 
others had been suppressed. Great Paris was indeed an un- 
happy city in those days, what with its republican sympathies 
that made it detest the monarchical Assembly at Versailles and 
its ever-increasing terror of the Commune, from which it 
prayed most fervently to be delivered among all the grisly 
stories that were current, the daily arrests, of citizens as host- 
ages, the casks of gunpowder that filled the sewers, where men 
patrolled by day and night awaiting the signal to apply the 
torch. 

Maurice, who had never been a drinking man, allowed him- 
self to be seduced by the too prevalent habit of over-indul- 
gence. It had become a thing of frequent occurrence with 
him now, when he was out on picket duty or had to spend 
the night in barracks, to take a “ pony” of brandy, and if 
he took a second it was apt to go to his head in the alcohol- 
laden atmosphere that he was forced to breathe. It had be- 
come epidemic, that chronic drunkenness, among those men 
with whom bread was scarce and who could have all the 
brandy they wanted by asking for it. Toward evening on 
Sunday, the 21st of May, Maurice came home drunk, for the 
first time in his life, to his room in the Rue des Orties, where 
he was in the habit of sleeping occasionally. He had been at 
Neuilly again that day, blazing away at the enemy and taking 
a nip now and then with the comrades, to see if it would not 
relieve the terrible fatigue from which he was suffering. 
Then, with a light head and heavy legs, he came and threw 


528 


THE DOWNFALL, 


himself on the bed in his little chamber ; it must have been 
through force of instinct, for he could never remember how 
he got there. And it was not until the following morning, 
when the sun was high in the heavens, that he awoke, aroused 
by the ringing of the alarm bells, the blare of trumpets and 
beating of drums. During the night the Versaillese, finding a 
gate undefended, had effected an unresisted entrance at the 
Point-du-Jour. 

When he had thrown on his clothes and hastened down into 
the street, his musket slung across his shoulder by the strap, 
a band of frightened soldiers whom he fell in with at the 
mairie of the arrondissement related to him the occurrences of 
the night, in the midst of a confusion such that at first he had. 
hard work to understand. Fort d’issy and the great battery 
at Montretout, seconded by Mont Valerien, for the last ten 
days had been battering the rampart at the Point-du-Jour, as 
a consequence of which the Saint-Cloud gate was no longer 
tenable and an assault had been ordered for the following 
morning, the 22d ; but someone who chanced to pass that way 
at about five o’clock perceived that the gate was unprotected 
and immediately notified the guards in the trenches, who were 
not more than fifty yards away. Two companies of the 37th 
regiment of regulars were the first to enter the city, and were 
quickly followed by the entire 4th corps under General 
Douay. All night long the troops were pouring in in an un- 
interrupted stream. At seven o’clock Verge’s division 
marched down to the bridge at Crenelle, crossed, and pushed 
on to the Trocadero. At nine General Clinchamp was master 
of Passy and la Muette. At three o’clock in the morning 
the ist corps had pitched its tents in the Bois de 'Boulogne, 
while at about the .same hour Bruat’s division was passing the 
Seine to seize the Sevres gate and facilitate the movement of 
the 2d Corps, General de Cissey’s, which occupied the dis- 
trict of Grenelle an hour later. The Versailles army, there- 
fore, on the morning of the 22d, was ma.ster of the Trocadero 
and the Chateau of la Muette on the right bank, and of 
Grenelle on the left ; and great was the rage and consterna- 
tion that prevailed among the Communists, who were already 
accusing one another of treason, frantic at the thought of 
their inevitable defeat. 

When Maurice at last understood the condition of affairs 
his first thought was that the end had come, that all left him 
was to go forth and meet his death. But the tocsin was peal- 


THE DOWNFALL. 


529 


ing, drums were beating, women and children, even, were 
working on the barricades, the streets were alive with the stir 
and bustle of the battalions hurrying to assume the positions 
assigned them in the coming conflict. By midday it was seen 
that the Versaillese were remaining quiet in their new posi- 
tions, and then fresh courage returned to the hearts of the 
soldiers of the Commune, who were resolved to conquer or die. 
The enemy’s army, which they had feared to see in possession 
of the Tuileriesby that time, profiting by the stern lessons of 
experience and imitating the prudent tactics of the Prussians, 
conducted its operations with the utmost caution. The Com- 
mittee of Public Safety and Delescluze, Delegate at War, 
directed the defense from their quarters in the Hotel de 
Ville. It was reported that a last proposal for a peaceable 
arrangement had been rejected by them with disdain. That 
served to inspire the men with still more courage, the triumph 
of Paris was assured, the resistance would be as unyieldingas 
the attack was vindictive, in the implacable hate, swollen by 
lies and cruelties, that inflamed the heart of either army. And 
that day was spent by Maurice in the quarters of the Champ 
de Mars and the Invalides, firing and falling back slowly from 
street to street. He had not been able to find his battalion ; 
he fought in the ranks with comrades who were' strangers to 
him, accompanying them in their march to the left bank with- 
out taking heed whither they were going. About four o’clock 
they had a furious conflict behind a barricade that had been 
thrown across the Rue de I’Universite, where it comes out on 
the Esplanade, and it was not until twilight that they abandoned 
it on learning that Bruat’s division, stealing up along thequai, 
had seized the Corps Legislatif. They had a narrow escape 
from capture, and it was with great difficulty that they man- 
aged to reach the Rue de Lille after a long circuit through the 
Rue Saint-Dominique and the Rue Bellechasse. At the close of 
that day the army of Versailles occupied a line which, begin- 
ning at the Vanyes gate, led past the Corps Legislatif, the 
Palace of the Elysee, St. Augustine’s Church, the Lazare 
station, and ended at the Asnieres gate. 

The next day, Tuesday, the 23d, was warm and bright, and 
a terrible day it was for Maurice. The few hundred federates 
with whom he was, and in whose ranks were men of many 
different battalions, were charged with the defense of the 
entire quartier, from the quai to the Rue Saint-Dominique. 
Most of them had bivouacked in the gardens of the great 


THE DOWNFALL. 


mansions that line the Rue de Lille ; he had had an unbroken 
night’s rest on a grass-plot at one side of the Palace of the 
Legion of Honor. It was his belief that soon as it was light 
enough the troops would move out from their shelter behind 
the Corps Legislatif and force them back upon the strong 
barricades in the Rue du Bac, but hour after hour passed and 
there was no sign of an attack. There was only some desul- 
tory firing at long range between parties posted at either end 
of the streets. The Versaillese, who were not desirous of 
attempting a direct attack on the front of the formidable 
fortress into which the insurgents had converted the terrace of 
the Tuileries, developed their plan of action with great cir- 
cumspection ; two strong columns were sent out to right and 
left that, skirting the ramparts, should first seize Montmartre 
and the Observatory and then, wheeling inward, swoop down 
on the central quarters, surrounding them and capturing all 
they contained, as a shoal of fish is captured in the meshes of 
a gigantic net. About two o’clock Maurice heard that the 
tricolor was floating over Montmartre : the great battery of 
the Moulin de la Galette had succumbed to the combined 
attack of three army corps, which hurled their battalions 
simultaneously on the northern and western faces of the butte 
through the Rues Lepic, des Saules anddu Mont-Cenis ; then 
the waves of the victorious troops had poured back on Paris, 
carrying the Place Saint-Georges, Notre-Dame de Lorette, 
the mairie in the Rue Drouot and the new Opera House, while 
on the left bank the turning movement, starting from the 
cemetery of Mont-Parnasse, had reached the Place d’Enfer 
and the Horse Market. These tidings of the rapid progress 
of the hostile army were received by the communards with 
mingled feelings of rage and terror amounting almost to 
stupefaction. What, Montmartre carried in two hours ; Mont- 
martre, the glorious, the impregnable citadel of the insurrec- 
tion ! Maurice saw that the ranks were thinning about him ; 
trembling soldiers, fearing the fate that was in store for them 
should they be caught, were slinking furtively away to look 
for a place where they might wash the powder grime from 
hands and face and exchange their uniform for a blouse. 
There was a rumor that the enemy were making ready to 
attack the Croix-Rouge and take their position in flank. By 
this time the barricades in the Rues Martignac and Bellechasse 
had been carried, the red-legs were beginning to make their 
appearance at the end of the Rue de Lille, and soon all that 


THE DOWNFALL. 


531 


remained was a little band of fanatics and men with the cour- 
age of their opinions, Maurice and some fifty more, who were 
resolved to sell their lives dearly, killing as many as they could 
of those Versaillese, who treated the federates like thieves and 
murderers, dragging away the prisoners they made and shoot- 
ing them in the rear of the line of battle. Their bitter ani- 
mosity had broadened and deepened since the days before ; 
it was war to the knife between those rebels dying for an idea 
and that army, in flamed with reactionary passions and irritated 
that it was kept so long in the field. 

About five o’clock, as Maurice and his companions were 
finally falling back to seek the shelter of the barricades in the 
Rue du Bac, descending the Rue de Lille and pausing at 
every moment to fire another shot, he suddenly beheld 
volumes of dense black smoke pouring from an open window 
in the Palace of the Legion of Honor. It was the first fire 
kindled in Paris, and in the furious insanity that possessed 
him it gave him a fierce delight. The hour had struck ; let 
the whole city go up in flame, let its people be cleansed by the 
fiery purification ! But a sight that he saw presently filled 
him with surprise ; a band of five or six men came hurrying 
out of the building, headed by a tall varlet in whom he recog- 
nized Chouteau, his former comrade in the squad of the io6th. 
He had seen him once before, after the i8th of March, wear- 
ing a gold-laced kepi ; he seemed by his bedizened uni- 
form to have risen in rank, was probably on the staff of some 
one of the many generals who were never seen where there 
was fighting going on. He remembered the account some- 
body had given him of that fellow Chouteau, of his quartering 
himself in the Palace of the Legion of Honor and living there, 
guzzling and swilling, in company with a mistress, wallowing 
with his boots on in the great luxurious beds, smashing the 
plate-glass mirrors with shots from his revolver, merely for 
the amusement there was in it. It was even asserted that the 
woman left the building every morning in one of the state 
carriages, under pretense of going to the Halles for her day’s 
marketing, carrying off with her great bundles of linen, clocks, 
and even articles of furniture, the fruit of their thieveries. 
And Maurice, as he watched him running away with his men, 
carrying a bucket of petroleum on his arm, experienced a 
sickening sensation of doubt and felt his faith beginning to 
waver. How could the terrible work they were engaged in 
be good, when men lilct that were the workmen ? 


532 


THE DOWNFALL. 


Hours passed, and still he fought on, but with a bitter feel- 
ing of distress, with no other wish than that he might die. If 
he had erred, let him at least atone for his error with his 
blood ! The barricade across the Rue de Lille, near its inter- 
section with the Rue du Bac, was a formidable one, composed 
of bags and casks filled with earth and faced by a deep ditch. 
He and a scant dozen of other federates were its only de- 
fenders, resting in a semi-recumbent position on the ground, 
infallibly causing every soldier who exposed himself to bite 
the dust. He lay there, without even changing his position, 
until nightfall, using up his cartridges in silence, in the 
dogged sullenness of his despair. The dense clouds of 
smoke from the Palace of the Legion of Honor were billowing 
upward in denser masses, the flames undistinguishable as yet 
in the dying daylight, and he watched the fantastic, changing 
forms they took as the wind whirled them downward to the 
street. Another fire had broken out in an hotel not far away. 
And all at once a comrade came running up to tell him that 
the enemy, not daring to advance along the street, were mak- 
ing a way for themselves through the houses and gardens, 
breaking down the walls with picks. The end was close at 
hand ; they might come out in the rear of the barricade at 
any moment. A shot having been fired from an upper 
window of a house on the corner, he saw Chouteau and his 
gang, with their petroleum and their lighted torch, rush with 
frantic speed to the buildings on either side and climb the 
stairs, and half an hour later, in the increasing darkness, the 
entire square was in flames, while he, still prone on the 
ground behind his shelter, availed himself of the vivid light to 
pick off any venturesome soldier who steppped from his pro- 
tecting doorway into the narrow street. 

How long did Maurice keep on firing ? He could not tell ; 
he had lost all consciousness of time and place. It might be 
nine o’clock, or ten, perhaps. He continued to load and fire ; 
his condition of hopelessness and gloom was pitiable ; death 
seemed to him long in coming. The detestable work he was 
engaged in gave him now a sensation of nausea, as the fumes 
of the wine he has drunk rise and nauseate the drunkard. An 
intense heat began to beat on him from the houses that were 
burning on every side— an air that scorched and asphyxiated. 
The carrefoLir, with the barricades that closed it in, was be- 
come an intrenched camp, guarded by the roaring flames that 
rose on every side and sent down showers of sparks. Those 


THE DOWNFALL 


533 


were the orders, were they not ? to fire the adjacent houses 
before they abandoned the barricades, arrest the progress of 
the troops by an impassable sea of flame, burn Paris in the 
face of the enemy advancing to take possession of it. And 
presently he became aware that the houses in the Rue du Bac 
were not the only ones that were devoted to destruction ; look- 
ing behind him he beheld the whole sky suffused with a bright, 
ruddy glow; he heard an ominous roar in the distance, as if 
all Paris were bursting into conflagration. Chouteau was no 
longer to be seen ; he had long since fled to save his skin from 
the bullets. His comrades, too, even those most zealous in 
the cause, had one by one stolen away, affrighted at the ap- 
proaching prospect of being outflanked. At last he was 
left alone, stretched at length between two sand bags, his 
every faculty bent on defending the front of the barricade, 
when the soldiers, who had made their way through the gar- 
dens in the middle of the block, emerged from a house in the 
Rue du Bac and pounced on him from the rear. 

For two whole days, in the fevered excitement of the su- 
preme conflict, Maurice had not once thought of Jean, nor 
had Jean, since he entered Paris with his regiment, which had 
been assigned to Bruat’s division, for a single moment remem- 
bered Maurice. The day before his duties had kept him in 
the neighborhood of the Champ de Mars and the Esplanade 
of the Invalides, and on this day he had remained in the Place 
du Palais-Bourbon until nearly noon, when the troops were 
sent forward to clean out the barricades of the quartier, as far 
as the Rue des Saints-Peres. A feeling of deep exasperation 
against the rioters had gradually taken possession of him, 
usually so calm and self-contained, as it had of all his com- 
rades, whose ardent wish it was to be allowed to go home and 
rest after so many months of fatigue. But of all the atrocities 
of the Commune that stirred his placid nature and made him 
forgetful even of his tenderest affections, there were none that 
angered him as did those conflagrations. What, burn houses, 
set fire to palaces, and simply because they had lost the battle ! 
Only robbers and murderers were capable of such work as 
that. And he who but the day before had sorrowed over the 
summary executions of the insurgents was now like a mad- 
man, ready to rend and tear, yelling, shouting, his eyes start- 
ing from their sockets. 

Jean burst like a hurricane into the Rue du Bac with the 
few men of his squad. At first he could distinguish no one ; 


534 


THE DOWNFALL. 


he thought the barricade had been abandoned. Then, 
looking more closely, he perceived a communard extended on 
the ground between two sand bags ; he stirred, he brought 
his piece to the shoulder, was about to discharge it down the 
Rue du Bac. And impelled by blind fate, Jean rushed upon 
the man and thrust his bayonet through him, nailing him to 
the barricade. 

Maurice had not had time to turn. He gave a cry and 
raised his head. The blinding light of the burning buildings 
fell full on their faces. 

“O Jean, dear old boy, is it you ?” 

To die, that was what he wished, what he had been longitig 
for. But to die by his brother’s hand, ah ! the cup was 
too bitter ; the thought of death no longer smiled on him. 

“ Is it you, Jean, old friend ? ” 

Jean, sobered by the terrible shock, looked at him with 
wild eyes. They were alone ; the other soldiers had gone in 
pursuit of the fugitives. About them the conflagrations 
roared and crackled and blazed up higher than before ; great 
sheets of white flame poured from the windows, while from 
within came the crash of falling ceilings. And Jean cast him- 
self on the ground at Maurice’s side, sobbing, feeling him, 
trying to raise him to see if he might not yet be saved. 

“ My boy, oh ! my poor, poor boy ! ” 


CHAPTER VHI. 

W HEN at about nine o’clock the train from Sedan, after 
innumerable delays along the way, rolled into the Saint- 
Denis station, the sky to the south was lit up by a fiery glow 
as if all Paris was burning. The light had increased with the 
growing darkness, and now it filled the horizon, climbing con- 
stantly higher up the heavens and tinging with blood-red hues 
some clouds, that lay off to the eastward in the gloom which the 
contrast rendered more opaque than ever. 

The travelers alighted, Henriette among the first, alarmed 
by the glare they had beheld from the windows of the cars as 
they rushed onward across the darkling fields. The soldiers 
of a Prussian detachment, moreover, that had been sent to 
occupy the station went through the train and compelled the 
passengers to leave it, while two of their number, stationed on 
the platform, shouted in guttural French ; 


THE DOWNFALL. 


535 


“ Paris is burning. All out here ! this train goes no fur- 
ther. Paris is burning, Paris is burning ! ” 

Henriette experienced a terrible shock. Moti Dieu f was she 
too late, then ? Receiving no reply from Maurice to her two 
last letters, the alarming news from Paris had filled her with 
such mortal terror that she determined to leave Remilly and 
come and try to find her brother in the great city. For months 
past her life at Uncle Fouchard’s had been a melancholy one ; 
the troops occupying the village and the surrounding country 
had become harsher and more exacting as the resistance of 
Paris was protracted, and now that peace was declared and the 
regiments were stringing along the roads, one by one, on their 
way home to Germany, the country and the cities through 
which they passed were taxed to their utmost to feed the 
hungry soldiers. The morning when she arose at daybreak to 
go and take the train at Sedan, looking out into the courtyard of 
the farm house she had seen a body of cavalry who had slept 
there all night, scattered promiscuously on the bare ground, 
wrapped in their long cloaks. They were so numerous that 
the earth was hidden by them. Then, at the shrill summons 
of a trumpet call, all had risen to their feet, silent, draped in 
the folds of those long mantles, and in such serried, close 
array that she involuntarily thought of the graves of a battle- 
field opening and giving up their dead at the call of the last 
trump. And here again at Saint-Denis she encountered the 
Prussians, and it was from Prussian lips that came that cry 
which caused her such distress : 

“All out here! this train goes no further. Paris is burn- 
ing J . 

Henriette, her little satchel in her hand, rushed distractedly 
up to the men in quest of information. There had been heavy 
fighting in Paris for the last two days, they told her, the rail- 
way had been destroyed, the Germans were watching the course 
of events. But she insisted on pursuing her journey at every 
risk, and catching sight upon the platform of the officer in 
command of the detachment detailed to guard the station, she 
hurried up to him. 

“ Sir, I am terribly distressed about my brother, and am try- 
ing to get to him. I entreat you, furnish me with the means 
to reach Paris.” The light from a gas jet fell full on the 
captain’s face; she stopped in surprise. “What, Otto, is it 
you ! Oh, mon Dieu I be good to me, since chance has once 
more brought us together ! ” 


536 


THE DOWNFALL. 


It was Otto Gunther, the cousin, as stiff and ceremonious as 
ever, tight-buttoned in his Guard’s uniform, the picture of a 
narrow-minded martinet. At first he failed to recognize the 
little, thin, insignificant-looking woman, with the handsome 
light hair and the pale, gentle face ; it was only by the brave, 
honest look that filled her eyes that he finally remembered 
her. His only answer was a slight shrug of the shoulders. 

“ You know I have a brother in the army,” Henriette eagerly 
went on. “ He is in Paris ; I fear he has allowed himself to 
become mixed up with this horrible conflict. O Otto, I be- 
seech you, assist me to continue my journey.” 

At last he condescended to speak. “ But I can do nothing 
to help you ; really I cannot. There have been no trains run- 
ning since yesterday ; I believe the rails have been torn up 
over by the ramparts somewhere. AndT have neither a horse 
and carriage nor a man to guide you at my disposal.” 

She looked him in the face with a low, stifled murmur of 
pain and sorrow to behold him thus obdurate. “Oh, you will 
do nothing to aid me. My God, to whom then can I turn ! ” 

It was an unlikely story for one of those Prussians to tell, 
whose hosts were everywhere all-powerful, who had the city at 
their beck and call, could have requisitioned a hundred car- 
riages and brought a thousand horses, from their stables. And 
he denied her prayer with the haughty air of a victor who has 
made it a law to himself not to interfere with the concerns of 
the vanquished, lest thereby he might defile himself and tarnish 
the luster of his new-won laurels. 

“ At all events,” continued Henriette, “ you know what is 
going on in the city ; you won’t refuse to tell me that much.” 

He gave a smile, so faint as scarce to be perceptible. “ Paris 
is burning. Look ! come this way, you can see more 
clearly.” 

Leaving the station, he preceded her along the track for a 
hundred steps or so until they came to an iron foot-bridge 
that spanned the road. When they had climbed the narrow 
stairs and reached the floor of the structure, resting their el- 
bows on the railing , they beheld the broad level plain out- 
stretched before them, at the foot of the slope of the embank- 
ment. 

“ You see, Paris is burning.” 

It was in the neighborhood of ten o’clock. The fierce red 
glare that lit the southern sky was ever mounting higher. The 
blood-red clouds had disappeared from where they had floated 


THE DOWNFALL. 


537 


in the east ; the zenith was like a great inverted bowl of inky 
blackness, across which ran the reflections of the distant flames. 
The horizon was one unbroken line of fire, but to the right 
they could distinguish spots where the conflagration was rag- 
ing with greater fury, sending up great spires and pinnacles 
of flame, of the most vivid scarlet, to pierce the dense opacity 
above, amid billowing clouds of smoke. It was like the burn- 
ing of some great forest, where the fire bridges intervening 
space, and leaps from tree to tree ; one would have said the 
very earth must be calcined and reduced to ashes beneath 
the heat of Paris’ gigantic funeral pyre. 

“ Look,” said Otto, “ that eminence that you see profiled in 
black against the red background is Montmartre. There on 
the left, at Belleville and la Villette, there has not been a house 
burned yet; it must be they are selecting the districts of the 
wealthy for their work ; and it spreads, it spreads. Look ! 
there is another conflagration breaking out ; watch the flames 
there to the right, how they seethe and rise and fall ; observe 
the shifting tints of the vapors that rise from the blazing fur- 
nace. And others, and others still ; the heavens are on fire ! ” 

He did not raise his voice or manifest any sign of feeling, 
and it froze Henriette’s blood that a human being could stand 
by and witness such a spectacle unmoved. Ah, that those 
Prussians should be there to see that sight ! She saw an insult 
in his studied calmness, in the faint smile that played upon 
his lips, as if he had long foreseen and been watching for that 
unparalleled disaster. So, Paris was burning then at last, 
Paris, upon whose monuments the German shells had scarce 
been able to inflict more than a scratch ! and he was there to see 
it burn, and in the spectacle found compensation for all his 
grievances, the inordinate length to which the siege had been 
protracted, the bitter, freezing weather, the difficulties they had 
surmounted only to see them present themselves anew under 
some other shape, the toil and trouble they had had in 
mounting their heavy guns, while all the time Germany from 
behind was reproaching them with their dilatoriness. Nothing 
in all the glory of their victory, neither the ceded provinces 
nor the indemnity of five milliards, appealed to him so strongly 
as did that sight of Paris, in a fit of furious madness, immo- 
lating herself and. going up in smoke and flame on that beau- 
tiful spring night. 

“ Ah, it was sure to come,” he added in a lower voice. 
‘‘ Fine work, my masters ! ” 


53B 


THE DOWNFALL. 


It seemed to Henriette as if her heart would break in pres- 
ence of that dire catastrophe. Her personal grief was lost to 
sight for some minutes, swallowed up in the great drama of a 
people’s atonement that was being enacted before her eyes. 
The thought of the lives that would be sacrificed to the de- 
vouring flames, the sight of the great capital blazing on the 
horizon, emitting the infernal light of the cities that were 
accursed and smitten for their iniquity, elicited from her an 
involuntary cry of anguish. She clasped her hands, asking : 

“ Oh, merciful Father, of what have we been guilty that we 
should be punished thus.^ ” 

Otto raised his arm in an oratorical attitude. He was on 
the point of speaking, with the stern, cold-blooded vehemence 
of the military bigot who has ever a quotation from Holy Writ 
at his tongue’s end, but glancing at the young woman, the 
look he encountered from her candid, gentle eyes checked 
him. Besides, his gesture had spoken for him ; it told his 
hatred for the nation, his conviction that he was in France to 
mete out justice, delegated by the God of Armies, to chastise 
a perverse and stiff-necked generation. Paris was burning off 
there on the horizon in expiation of its centuries of dissolute 
life, of its heaped-up measure of crime and lust. Once again 
the German race were to be the saviors of the world, were to 
purge Europe of the remnant of Latin corruption. He let his 
arm fall to his side and simply said : 

“ It is the end of all. There is another quartier doomed, 
for see, a fresh fire has broken out there to the right. In that 
direction, that line of flame that creeps onward like a stream 
of lava ” 

Neither spoke for a long time ; an awed silence rested on 
them. The great waves of flame continued to ascend, sending 
up streamers and ribbons of vivid light high into the heavens. 
Beneath the sea of fire was every moment extending its 
boundaries, a tossing, stormy, burning ocean, whence now 
arose dense clouds of smoke that collected over the city in a 
huge pall of a somber coppery hue, which was wafted slowly 
athwart the blackness of the night, streaking the vault of 
heaven with its accursed rain of ashes and of sOot. 

Henriette started as if awaking from an evil dream, and, the 
thought of her brother flowing in again upon her mind, once 
more became a supplicant. 

“ Can you do nothing for me ? won’t you assist me to get to 
Paris?” 


THE DOWNFALL. 


539 


With his former air of unconcern Otto again raised his eyes 
to the horizon, smiling vaguely. 

“What would be the use ? since to-morrow morning the city 
will be a pile of ruins ! " 

And that was all ; she left the bridge, without even bidding 
him good-by, flying, she knew not whither, with her little 
satchel, while he remained yet a long time at his post of obser- 
vation, a motionless figure, rigid and erect, lost in the darkness 
of the night, feasting his eyes on the spectacle of that Babylon 
in flames. 

Almost the first person that Henriette encountered on emerg- 
ing from the station was a stout lady who was chaffering with 
a hackman over his charge for driving her to the Rue Riche- 
lieu in Paris, and the young woman pleaded so touchingly, 
with tears in her eyes, that finally the lady consented to let her 
occupy a seat in the carriage. The driver, a little swarthy man, 
whipped up his horse and did not open his lips once during 
the ride, but the stout lady was extremely loquacious, telling- 
how she had left the city the day but •one before after tightly 
locking and bolting her shop, but had been so imprudent as to 
leave some valuable papers behind, hidden in a hole in the 
wall ; hence her mind had been occupied by one engrossing 
thought for the two hours that the city had been burning, how 
she might return and snatch her property from the flames. 
The sleepy guards at the barrier allowed the carriage to pass 
without much difficulty, the worthy lady allaying their scruples 
with a fib, telling them she was bringing back her niece with 
her to Paris to assist in nursing her husband, who had been 
wounded by the Versaillese. It was not until they commenced 
to make their way along the paved streets that they encoun- 
tered serious obstacles ; they were obliged at every moment 
to turn out in order to avoid the barricades that were erected 
across the roadway, and when at last they reached the boule- 
vard Poissoniere the driver declared he would go no further. 
The two women were therefore forced to continue their way 
on foot, through the Rue du Sentier, the Rue des Jefineurs, 
and all the circumscribing region of the Bourse. As they ap- 
proached the fortifications the blazing sky had made their way 
as bright before them as if it had been broad day ; now they 
were surprised by the deserted and tranquil condition of the 
streets, where the only sound that disturbed the stillness was a 
dull, distant roar. In the vicinity of the Bourse, however, they 
were alarmed by the sound of musketry ; they slipped along 


540 


THE DOWNFALL. 


with great caution, hugging the walls. On reaching the Rue 
Richelieu and finding her shop had not been disturbed, the 
stout lady was so overjoyed that she insisted on seeing her 
traveling companion safely housed ; they struck through the 
Rue du Hazard, the Rue Saint-Anne, and finally reached the - 
Rue des Orties. Some federates, whose battalion was still 
holding the Rue Saint-Anne, attempted to prevent them from 
passing. It was four o’clock and already quite light when 
Henriette, exhausted by the fatigue of her long day and the 
stress of her emotions, reached the old house in the Rue des 
Orties and found the door standing open. Climbing the dark, 
narrow staircase, she turned to the leh and discovered behind 
a door a ladder that led upward toward the roof. 

Maurice, meantime, behind the barricade in the Rue du 
Bac, had succeeded in raising himself to his knees, and Jean’s 
heart throbbed with a wild, tumultuous hope, for he believed 
he had pinned his friend to the earth. 

“ Oh, my little one, are you alive still ? is that great happi- 
ness in store for me, brute that I am? Wait a moment, let 
me see.” 

He examined the wound with great tenderness by the light 
of the burning buildings. The bayonet had gone through the 
right arm near the shoulder, but a more serious part of the 
business was that it had afterward entered the body between 
two of the ribs and probably touched the lung. Still, the 
wounded man breathed without much apparent difficulty, but 
the right arm hung useless at his side. 

“ Poor old boy, don’t grieve ! We shall have time to say 
good-by to each other, and it is better thus, you see ; I am 
glad to have done with it all. You have done enough for me 
to make up for this, for I should have died long ago in some 
ditch, even as I am dying now, had it not been for you.” 

But Jean, hearing him speak thus, again gave way to an 
outburst of violent grief. 

Hush, hush ! Twice you saved me from the clutches of 
the Prussians. We were quits ; it was my turn to devote my 
life, and instead of that I have slain you. Ah, ton7ierre de 
Dieu! I must have been drunk not to recognize you ; yes, 
drunk as a hog from glutting myself with blood.” 

Tears streamed from his eyes at the recollection of their last 
parting, down there at Remilly, when they embraced, asking 
themselves if they should ever meet again, and how, under 
what circumstances of sorrow or of gladness. It was nothing, 


THE DOWNFALL. 


541 


then, that they had passed toilsome days and sleepless nights 
together, with death staring them in the face ? It was to 
bring them to this abominable thing, to this senseless, atro- 
cious fratricide, that their hearts had been fused in the cru- 
cible of those weeks of suffering endured in common ? No, 
no, it could not be ; he turned in horror from the thought. 

“ Let’s see what I can do, little one ; I must save you.” 

The first thing to be done was to remove him to a place of 
safety, for the troops dispatched the wounded Communists 
wherever they found them. They were alone, fortunately; 
there was not a minute to lose. He first ripped the sleeve 
from wrist to shoulder with his knife, then took off the uniform 
coat. Some blood flowed ; he made haste to bandage the arm 
securely with strips that he tore from the lining of the garment 
for the purpose. After that he staunched as well as he could 
the wound in the side and fastened the injured arm over it. 
He luckily had a bit of cord in his pocket, which he knotted 
tightly around the primitive dressing, thus assuring the immo- 
bility of the injured parts and preventing hemorrhage. 

“ Can you walk ? ” 

“ Yes, I think so.” 

But he did not dare to take him through the streets thus, in 
his shirt sleeves. Remembering to have seen a dead soldier 
lying in an adjacent street, he hurried off and presently came 
back with a capote and a kepi. He threw the greatcoat over 
his friend’s shoulders and assisted him to slip his uninjured 
arm into the left sleeve. Then, when he had put the kepi on 
his head : 

“ There, now you are one of us — where are we to go ? ” 

That was the question. His reviving hope and courage 
were suddenly damped by a horrible uncertainty. Where 
were they to look for a shelter that gave promise of security ? 
the troops were searching the houses, were shooting every 
Communist they took with arms in his hands. And in addition 
to that, neither of them knew a soul in that portion of the 
city to whom they might apply for succor and refuge ; not 
a place where they might hide their heads. 

“ The best thing to do would be to go home where I live,” 
said Maurice. “ The house is out of the way ; no one will 
ever think of visiting it. But it is in the Rue des Orties, on 
the other side of the river.” ’ 

Jean gave vent to a muttered oath in his irresolution and 
despair, 


THE DOWHEALL 


“ Noin de Dieu ! What are we to do ? ” 

It was useless to think of attempting to pass the Pont Royal, 
which could not have been more brilliantly illuminated if the 
noonday sun had been shining on it. At every moment shots 
were heard coming from either bank of the river. Besides 
that, the blazing Tuileries lay .directly in their path, and the 
Louvre, guarded and barricaded, would be an insurmountable 
obstacle. 

“ That ends it, then ; there’s no way open,” said Jean, who 
had spent six months in Paris on his return from the Italian 
campaign. 

An idea suddenly flashed across his brain. There had 
formerly been a place a little below the Pont Royal where 
small boats were kept for hire ; if the boats were there still 
they would make the venture. The route was a long and 
dangerous one, but they had no choice, and, further, they must 
act with decision. 

See here, little one, we’re going to clear out from here ; 
the locality isn’t healthy. I’ll manufacture an excuse for my 
lieutenant ; I’ll tell him the communards took me prisoner and 
I got away.” 

Taking his unhurt arm he sustained him for the short distance 
they had to traverse along the Rue du Bac, where the tall 
houses on either hand were now ablaze from cellar to garret, 
like huge torches. The burning cinders fell on them in 
showers, the heat was so intense that the hair on their head 
and face was singed, and when they came out on the quai 
they stood for a moment dazed and blinded by the terrific 
light of the conflagrations, rearing their tall crests heaven- 
ward, on either side the Seine. 

“ One wouldn’t need a candle to go to bed by here,” grum- 
bled Jean, with whose plans the illumination promised to inter- 
fere. And it was only when he had helped Maurice down the 
steps to the left and a little way down stream from the bridge 
that he felt somewhat easy in mind. There was a clump of 
tall trees standing on the bank of the stream, whose shadow 
gave them a measure of security. For near a quarter of an 
hour the dark forms moving to and fro on the opposite quai 
kept them in a feyer of apprehension. There was firing, a 
scream was heard, succeeded by a loud splash, and the bosom 
of the river was disturbed. 'The bridge was evidently 
guarded. 

“ Suppose we pass the night in that shed ? ” suggested 


THE DOWNFALL. 543 

Maurice, pointing to the wooden structure that served the 
boatman as an office. 

“Yes, and get pinched to-morrow morning ! ” 

Jean was still harboring his idea. He had found quite a 
flotilla of small boats there, but they were all securely fastened 
with chains ; how was he to get one loose and secure a pair 
of oars ? At last he discovered two oars that had been 
thrown aside as useless ; he succeeded in forcing a padlock, 
and when he had stowed Maurice away in the bow, shoved off 
and allowed the boat to drift with the current, cautiously 
hugging the shore and keeping in the shadow of the bathing- 
houses. Neither of them spoke a word, horror-stricken as 
they were by the baleful spectacle that presented itself to their 
vision. As they floated down the stream and their horizon 
widened the enormity of the terrible sight increased, and 
when they reached the bridge of Solferino a single glance suf- 
ficed to embrace both the blazing quais. 

On their left the palace of the Tuileries was burning. It 
was not yet dark when the Communists had fired the two ex- 
tremities of the structure, the Pavilion de Flore and the 
Pavilion de Marsan, and with rapid strides the flames had 
gained the Pavilion de I’Horloge in the central portion, beneath 
which, in the Salle des Marechaux, a mine had been prepared 
by stacking up casks of powder. At that moment the inter- 
vening buildings were belching from their shattered windows 
dense volumes of reddish smoke, streaked with long ribbons 
of blue flame. The roofs, yawning as does the earth in 
regions where volcanic agencies prevail, were seamed with 
great cracks through which the raging sea of fire beneath was 
visible. But the grandest, saddest spectacle of all was that 
afforded by the Pavilion de Flore, to which the torch had 
been earliest applied and which was ablaze from its foun- 
dation to its lofty summit, burning with a deep, fierce roar 
that could be heard far away. The petroleum with which 
the floors and hangings had been soaked gave the flames an 
intensity such that the ironwork of the balconies was seen to 
twist and writhe in the convolutions of a serpent, and the tall 
monumental chimneys, with their elaborate carvings, glowed 
with the fervor of live coals. 

Then, still on their left, were,ffirst, the Chancellerie of the 
Legion of Honor, which was fired at five o’clock in the after- 
noon and had been burning nearly seven hours, and next, the 
Palace of the Council of State, a huge rectangular structure of 


544 


THE DOWNFALL. 


Stone, which was spouting torrents of fire from every orifice 
in each of its two colonnaded stories. The four structures 
surrounding the great central court had all caught at the 
same moment, and the petroleum, which here also had been 
distributed by the barrelful, had poured down the four grand 
staircases at the four corners of the building in rivers of hell- 
fire. On the facade that faced the river the black line of the 
mansard was profiled distinctly against the ruddy sky, amid 
the red tongues that rose to lick its base, while colonnades, 
entablatures, friezes, carvings, all stood out with startling 
vividness in the blinding, shimmering glow. So great was the 
energy of the fire, so terrible its propulsive force, that the 
colossal structure was in some sort raised bodily from the 
earth, trembling and rumbling on its foundations, preserving 
intact only its four massive walls,’ in the fierce eruption that 
hurled its heavy zinc roof high in air. Then, close at one 
side were the d’Orsay barracks, which burned with a flame 
that seemed to pierce the heavens, so purely white and so un- 
wavering that it was like a tower of light. And finally, back 
from the river, were still other fires, the seven houses in the 
Rue du Bac, the twenty-two houses in the Rue de Lille, help- 
ing to tinge the sky a deeper crimson, profiling their flames on 
other flames, in a blood-red ocean that seemed to have no 
end. 

Jean murmured in awed tone : 

“ Did ever mortal man look on the like of this ! the very 
river is on fire.” 

Their boat seemed to be sailing on the bosom of an incan- 
descent stream. As the dancing lights of the mighty confla- 
grations were caught by the ripples of the current the Seine 
seemed to be pouring down torrents of living coals ; flashes 
of intensest crimson played fitfully across its surface, the blaz- 
ing brands fell in showers into the water and were extinguished 
with a hiss. And ever they floated downward with the tide 
on the bosom of that blood-red stream, between the blazing 
palaces on either hand, like wayfarers in some accursed city, 
doomed to destruction and burning on the banks of a river of 
molten lava. 

“ Ah ! ” exclaimed Maurice, with a fresh access of madness 
at the sight of the havoc he had longed for, “ let it burn, let 
it all go up in smoke ! ” 

But Jean silenced him with a terrified gesture, as if he feared 
such blasphemy might bring them evil. Where could a young 


THE DOWNFALL. 


545 


man whom he loved so fondly, so delicately nurtured, so well 
informed, have picked up such ideas? And he applied him- 
self more vigorously to the oars, for they had now passed the 
bridge of Solferino and were come out into a wide open space 
of water. The light was so intense that the river was illumin- 
ated as by the noonday sun when it stands vertically above 
men’s heads and casts no shadow. The most minute objects, 
such as the eddies in the stream, the stones piled on the banks, 
the small trees along the quais, stood out before their vision with 
wonderful distinctness. The bridges, too, were particularly 
noticeable in their dazzling whiteness, and so clearly defined 
that they could have counted every stone ; they had the ap- 
pearance of narrow gangways thrown across the fiery stream 
to connect one conflagration with the other. Amid the roar 
of the flames and the general clamor a loud crash occasionally 
anounced the fall of some stately edifice. Dense clouds of 
soot hung in the air and settled everywhere, the wind brought 
odors of pestilence on its wings. And another horror was 
that Paris, those more distant quarters of the city that lay back 
from the banks of the Seine, had ceased to exist for them. To 
right and left of the conflagration that raged with such fierce 
resplendency was an unfathomable gulf of blackness ; all that 
presented itself to their strained gaze was a vast waste of shadow, 
an empty void, as if the devouring element had reached the 
utmost limits of the city and all Paris were swallowed up in ever- 
lasting night. And the heavens, too, were dead and lifeless ; 
the flames rose so high that they extinguished the stars. 

Maurice, who was becoming delirious, laughed wildly. 
“ High carnival at the Consoil d’Etat and at the Tuileries to- 
night ! They have illuminated the facades, women are 
dancing beneath the sparkling chandeliers. Ah, dance, 
dance and be merry, in your smoking petticoats, with your 
chignons ablaze ” 

And he drew a picture of the feasts of Sodom and Go- 
morrah, the music, the lights, the flowers, the unmentionable 
orgies of lust and drunkenness, until the candles on the walls 
blushed at the shamelessness of the display and fired the 
palaces that sheltered such depravity. Suddenly there was a 
terrific explosion. The fire, approaching from either extremity 
of the Tuileries, had reached the Salle des Marechaux, the 
casks of powder caught, the Pavilion de I’Horloge was blown 
into the air with the violence of a powder mill. A column of 
flame mounted high in the heayens, and spreading, expanded 


546 


THE DOWNFALL. 


in a great fiery plume on the inky blackness of the sky, the 
crowning display of the horrid fete. 

“ Bravo ! ” exclaimed Maurice, as at the end of the play, 
when the lights are extinguished and darkness settles on the 
stage. 

Again Jean, in stammering, disconnected sentences, be- 
sought him to be quiet. No, no, it was not right to wish evil 
to anyone ! And if they invoked destruction, would not they 
themselves perish in the general ruin ? His sole desire was to 
find a landing place so that he might no longer have that 
horrid spectacle before his eyes. He considered it best not to 
attempt to land at the Pont de la Concorde, but, rounding the 
elbow of the Seine, pulled on until they reached the Quai 
de la Conference, and even at that critical moment, instead of 
shoving the skiff out into the stream to take its chances, he 
wasted some precious moments in securing it, in his instinc- 
tive respect for the property of others. While doing this he 
had seated Maurice comfortably on the bank ; his plan was to 
reach the Rue des Orties through the Place de la Concorde and 
the RueSaint-Honore. Before proceeding further he climbed 
alone to the top of the steps that ascended from the quai to 
explore the ground, and on witnessing the obstacles they 
would have to surmount his courage was almost daunted. 
There lay the impregnable fortress of the Commune, the 
terrace of the Tuileries bristling with cannon, the Rues 
Royale, Florentin, and Rivoli obstructed by lofty and massive 
barricades ; and this state of affairs explained the tactics of 
the army of Versailles, whose line that night described an im- 
mense arc, the center and apex resting on the Place de la 
Concorde, one of the two extremities being at the freight 
depot of the Northern Railway on the right bank, the other 
on the left bank, at one of the bastions of the ramparts, near 
the gate of Arcueil. But as the night advanced the Commun- 
ards had evacuated the Tuileries and the barricades and the 
regular troops had taken possession of the quartier in the 
midst of further conflagrations ; twelve houses at the junction 
of the Rue Saint-Honore and the Rue Royale had been burn- 
ing since nine o’clock in the evening. 

When Jean descended the steps and reached the river-bank 
again he found Maurice in a semi-comatose condition, the 
effects of the reaction after his hysterical outbreak. 

“ It will be no easy job. I hope you are going to be 
able to walk, youngster ? ” 


THE DOWNFALL. 547 

“Yes, yes; don’t be alarmed. I’ll get there somehow, 
alive or dead.” 

It was not without great difficulty that he climbed the stone 
steps, and when he reached the level ground of the qtiai at 
the summit he walked very slowly, supported by his com- 
panion’s arm, with the shuffling gait of a somnambulist. 
'I'he day had not dawned yet, but the reflected light from the 
burning buildings cast a lurid illumination on the wide Place. 
They made their way in silence across its deep solitude, sick 
at heart to behold the mournful scene of devastation it pre- 
sented. At either extremity, beyond the bridge and at the 
further end of the Rue Royale, they could faintly discern 
the shadowy outlines of the Palais Bourbon and the Church of 
the Madeleine, torn by shot and shell. The terrace of the 
Tuileries had been breached by the fire of the siege guns and 
was partially in ruins. On the Place itself the bronze railings 
and ornaments of the fountains had been chipped and defaced 
by the balls ; the colossal statue of Lille lay on the ground 
shattered by a projectile, while near at hand the statue of 
Strasbourg, shrouded in heavy veils of crape, seemed to be 
mourning the ruin that surrounded it on every side. And 
near the Obelisk, which had escaped unscathed, a gaspipe in 
its trench had been broken by the pick of a careless work- 
man, and the escaping gas, fired by some accident, was flaring 
up in a great undulating jet, with a roaring, hissing sound. 

Jean gave a wide berth to the barricade erected across the 
Rue Royale between the Ministry of Marine and the Garde- 
Meuble, both of which the fire had spared ; he could hear the 
voices of the soldiers behind the sand bags and casks of earth 
with which it was constructed. Its front was protected by a 
ditch, filled with stagnant, greenish water, in which was float- 
ing the dead body of a federate, and through one of its em- 
brasures they caught a glimpse of the houses in the carrefour 
Saint-Honore, which were burning still in spite of the engines 
that had come in from the suburbs, of which they heard the 
roar and clatter. To right and left the trees and the kiosks 
of the newspaper venders were riddled by the storm of bullets 
to which they had been subjected. Loud cries of horror 
arose ; the firemen, in exploring the cellar of one of the burn- 
ing houses, had come across^the charred bodies of seven of its 
inmates. 

Although the barricade that closed the entrance to the Rue 
Saiiit-Florentin and the Rue de Rivoli by its skilled construe- 


548 


THE DOWNFALL. 


tion and great height appeared even more formidable than the 
other, Jean’s instinct told him they would have less difficulty 
in getting by it. It was completely evacuated, indeed, and 
the Versailles troops had not yet entered it. The abandoned 
guns were resting in the embrasures in peaceful slumber, the 
only living thing behind that invincible rampart was a stray 
dog, that scuttled away in haste. But as Jean was making 
what speed he could along the Rue Saint-Florentin, sustaining 
Maurice, whose strength was giving out, that which he had 
been in fear of came to pass ; they fell directly into the arms 
of an entire company of the 88th of the line, which had turned 
the barricade. 

Captain,” he explained, “ this is a comrade of mine, who 
has just been wounded by those bandits. I am taking him to 
the hospital.” 

It was then that the capote which he had thrown over 
Maurice’s shoulders stood them in good stead, and Jean’s 
heart was beating like a trip-hammer as at last they turned 
into the Rue Saint-Honore. . Day was just breaking, and the 
sound of shots reached their ears from the cross-streets, for 
fighting was going on still throughout the quartier. It was little 
short of a miracle that they finally reached the Rue des 
Frondeurs without sustaining any more disagreeable adven- 
ture. Their progress was extremely slow ; the last four or 
five hundred yards appeared interminable. In the Rue des 
Frondeurs they struck up against a 9ommunist picket, but the 
federates, thinking a whole regiment was at hand, took to 
their heels. And now they had but a short bit of the Rue 
d’Argenteuil to traverse and they would be safe in the Rue des 
Orties. 

For four long hours that seemed like an eternity Jean’s 
longing desire had been bent on that Rue des Orties with 
feverish impatience, and now they were there it appeared like 
a haven of safety. It was dark, silent, and deserted, as if 
there were no battle raging within a hundred leagues of it. 
The house, an old, narrow house without a concierge., was still 
as the grave. 

“ I have the keys in my pocket,” murmured Maurice. “ The 
big one opens the street door, the little one is the key of my 
room, way at the top of the house.” 

He succumbed and fainted dead away in Jean’s arms, whose 
alarm and distre.ss were extreme. They made him forget to 
close the outer door, and he had to grope his way up that 


THE DOWNFALL. 


549 


Strange, dark staircase, bearing his lifeless burden and ob- 
serving the greatest caution not to stumble or make any noise 
that might arouse the sleeping inmates of the rooms. When 
he had gained the top he had to deposit the wounded man on 
the floor while he searched for the chamber door by striking 
matches, of which he fortunately had a supply in his pocket, 
and only when he had found and opened it did he return and 
raise him in his arms again. Entering, he laid him on the 
little iron bed that faced the window, which he threw open to. 
its full extent in his great need of air and light. It was broad 
day ; he dropped on his knees beside the bed, sobbing as if his 
heart would break, suddenly abandoned by all his strength as 
the fearful thought again smote him that he had slain his 
friend. 

Minutes passed ; he was hardly surprised when, raising his 
eyes, he saw Henriette standing by the bed. It was perfectly 
natural : her brother was dying, she had come. He had not 
even seen her enter the room ; for all he knew she might have 
been standing there for hours. He sank into a chair and 
watched her with stupid eyes as she hovered about the bed, 
her heart wrung with mortal anguish at sight of her brother 
lying there senseless, in his blood-stained garments. Then 
his memory began to act again ; he asked : 

“ Tell me, did you close the street door?” 

She answered with an affirmative motion of the head, and 
as she came toward him, extending her two hands in her great 
need of sympathy and support, he added : 

“ You know it was I who killed him.” 

She did not understand ; she did not believe him. He felt 
no flutter in the two little hands that rested confidingly in his 
own. 

“ It was I who killed him — yes, 'twas over yonder, behind 
a barricade, I did it. He was fighting on one side, I on the 
other ” 

There began to be a fluttering of the little hands. 

“ We were like drunken men, none of us knew what he 
was about — it was I who killed him.” 

Then Henriette, shivering, pale as death, withdrew her 
hands, fixing on him a gaze that was full of horror. Father 
of Mercy, was the end of all things come ! was her crushed 
and bleeding heart to know no peace for ever more ! Ah, 
that Jean, of whom she had been thinking that very day, 
happy in the unshaped hope that perhaps she might see him 


THE DOWNFALL. 


S5<5 

once again ! And it was he who had done that abominable 
thing ; and yet he had saved Maurice, for was it not he who 
had brought him home through so many perils ? She could 
not yield her hands to him now without a revolt of all her 
being, but she uttered a cry into which she threw the last 
hope of her tortured and distracted heart. 

“ Oh ! I will save him ; I must save him, now ! ” 

She had acquired considerable experience in surgery during 
the long time she had been in attendance on the hospital at 
Remilly, and now she proceeded without delay to examine her 
brother’s hurt, who remained unconscious while she was un- 
dressing him. But when she undid the rude bandage of 
Jean’s invention, he stirred feebly and uttered a faint cry of 
pain, opening wide his eyes that were bright with fever. He 
recognized her at once and smiled. 

“You here ! Ah, how glad I am to see you once more be- 
fore I die ! ” 

She silenced him, speaking in a tone of cheerful confidence. 

“ Hush, don’t talk of dying ; I won’t allow it ! I mean that 
you shall live ! There, be quiet, and let me see what is to be 
done.” 

However, when Henriette had examined the injured arm and 
the wound in the side, her face became clouded and a trou- 
bled look rose to her eyes. She installed herself as mistress 
in the room, searching until she found a little oil, tearing up 
old shirts for bandages, while Jean descended to the lower 
regions for a pitcher of water. He did not open his mouth, 
but looked on in silence as she washed and deftly dressed the 
wounds, incapable of aiding her, seemingly deprived of all 
power of action by her presence there. When she had con- 
cluded her task, however, noticing her alarmed expression, he 
proposed to her that he should go and secure a doctor, but 
she was in possession of all her clear intelligence. No, no ; she 
would not have a chance-met doctor, of whom they knew 
nothing, who, perhaps, would betray her brother to the au- 
thorities. They must have a man they could depend on ; they 
could afford to wait a few hours. Finally, when Jean said he 
must go and report for duty with his company, it was agreed 
that he should return as soon as he could get away, and try to 
bring a surgeon with him. 

He delayed his departure, seemingly unable to make up his 
mind to leave that room, whose atmosphere was pervaded by 
the evil he had unintentionally done. The window, which had 


THE DOWNFALL. 


551 


been closed for a moment, had been opened again, and from 
it the wounded man, lying on his bed, his head propped up 
by pillows, was looking out over the city, while the others, 
also, in the oppressive silence that had settled on the cham- 
ber, were gazing out into vacancy. 

From that elevated point of the Butte des Moulins a good 
half of Paris lay stretched beneath their eyes in a vast pano- 
rama : first the central districts, from the Faubourg Saint- 
Honore to the Bastille, then the Seine in its entire course 
through the city, with the thickly-built, densely-populated re- 
gions of the leh bank, an ocean of roofs, treetops, steeples, 
domes, and towers. The light was growing stronger, the 
abominable night, than which there have been few more terri- 
ble in history, was ended ; but beneath the rosy sky, in the 
pure, clear light of the rising sun, the fires were blazing still. 
Before them lay the burning Tuileries, the d’Orsay barracks, 
the Palaces of the Council of State and the Legion of Honor, 
the flames from which were paled by the superior refulgence 
of the day-star. Even beyond the houses in the Rue de Lille 
and the Rue du Bac there must have been other structures 
burning, for clouds of smoke were visible rising from the car- 
refour of la Croix-Rouge, and, more distant still, from the 
Rue Vavin and the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Nearer at 
hand and to their right the fires in the Rue Saint-Honore were 
dying out, while to the left, at the Palais-Royal and the new 
Louvre, to which the torch had not been applied until near 
morning, the work of the incendiaries was apparently a fail- 
ure. But what they were unable to account for at first was 
the dense volume of black smoke which, impelled by the west 
wind, came driving past their window. Fire had been set to 
the Ministry of Finance at three o’clock in the morning, and 
ever since that time it had been smoldering, emitting no blaze, 
among the stacks and piles of documents that were contained 
in the low-ceiled, fire-proof vaults and chambers. And if the 
terrific impressions of the night were not there to preside 
at the awakening of the great city — the fear of total destruc- 
tion, the Seine pouring its fiery waves past their doors, Paris 
kindling into flame from end to end — a feeling of gloom and 
despair hung heavy over the quartiers that had been 
spared, with that dense, on-pouring smoke, whose dusky cloud 
was ever spreading. Presently the sun, which had risen bright 
and clear, was hid by it, and all the golden sky was filled with 
the great funeral pall. 


552 


THE DOWNFALL. 


Maurice, who appeared to be delirious again, made a slow, 
sweeping gesture that embraced the entire horizon, murmur- 
ing : 

“ Is it all burning? Ah, how long it takes ! " 

Tears rose to Henriette’s eyes, as if her burden of misery 
was made heavier for her by the share her brother had had in 
those deeds of horror. And Jean, who dared neither take her 
hand nor embrace his friend, left the room with the air of one 
crazed by grief. 

“ I will return soon. Au revoir ! ” 

It was dark, however, nearly eight o’clock, before he was 
able to redeem his promise. Notwithstanding his great dis- 
tress he was happy; his regiment had been transferred from 
the first to the second line and assigned the task of protecting 
the quartier, so that, bivouacking with his company in the 
Place du Carrousel, he hoped to get a chance to run in each 
evening to see how the wounded man was getting on. And he 
did not return alone ; as luck would have it he had fallen in 
with the former surgeon of the io6th and had brought him 
along with him, having been unable to find another doctor, 
consoling himself with the reflection that the terrible, big man 
with the lion’s mane was not such a bad sort of fellow after 
all. 

When Bouroche, who knew nothing of the patient he was 
summoned with such insistence to attend and grumbled at 
having to climb so many stairs, learned that it was a Com- 
munist he had on his hands he commenced to storm. 

“God’s thunder, what do you take me for? Do you sup- 
pose I’m going to waste my time on those thieving, murdering, 
house-burning scoundrels ? As for this particular bandit, his 
case is clear, and I’ll take it upon me to sec he is cured ; yes, 
with a bullet in his head ! ” 

But his anger subsided suddenly at sight of Henriette’s pale 
face and her golden hair streaming in disorder over her black 
dress. 

“ He is my brother, doctor, and he was with you at Sedan.” 

He made no reply, but uncovered the injuries and examined 
them in silence ; then, taking some phials from his pocket, he 
made a fresh dressing, 'explaining to the young woman how it 
was done. When he had finished he turned suddenly to the 
patient, and asked in his loud, rough voice : 

“ Why did you take sides with those ruffians ? What 
possessed you to be guilty of such an abomination ? ” 


THE DOWNFALL. 


553 


Maurice, with a feverish luster in his eyes, had been watch- 
ing him since he entered the room, but no word had escaped 
his lips. He answered in a voice that was almost fierce, so 
eager was it : 

“ Because there is too much suffering in the world, too 
much wickedness, too much infamy ! ” 

Bouroche’s shrug of the shoulders seemed to indicate that 
he thought a young man was likely to make his mark who 
carried such ideas about in his head. He appeared to be 
about to say something further, but changed his mind and 
bowed himself out, simply adding : 

“ I will come in again.” 

To Henriette, on the landing, he said he would not venture 
to make any promises. The injury to the lung was serious ; 
hemorrhage might set in and carry off the patient without a 
moment’s warning. And when she re-entered the room she 
forced a smile to her lips, notwithstanding the sharp stab with 
which the doctor’s words had pierced her heart, for had she 
not promised herself to save him ? and could she permit him 
to be snatched from them now that they three were again 
united, with a prospect of a lifetime of affection and happi- 
ness before them ? She had not left the room since morning, 
an old woman who lived on the landing having kindly offered 
to act as her messenger for the purchase of such things as she 
required. And she returned and resumed her place upon a 
chair at her brother’s bedside. 

But Maurice, in his febrile excitation, questioned Jean, 
insisting on knowing what had happened since the morning. 
The latter did not tell him everything, maintaining a discreet 
silence upon the furious rage which Paris, now it was delivered 
from its tyrants, was manifesting toward the dying Commune. 
It was now Wednesday. For two interminable days succeed- 
ing the Sunday evening when the conflict first broke out the 
citizens had lived in their cellars, quaking with fear, and when 
they ventured out at last on Wednesday morning, the spec- 
tacle of bloodshed and devastation that met their eyes on 
every side, and more particularly the frightful ruin entailed 
by the conflagrations, aroused in their breasts feelings the bit- 
terest and most vindictive. It was felt in every quarter that 
the punishment must be worthy of the crime. The houses in 
the suspected quarters were subjected to a rigorous search, and 
men and women who were at all tainted with suspicion were 
led away in droves and shot without the formality of an exam- 


554 


THE DOWNFALL. 


ination. At six o’clock of the evening of that day the army 
of the Versaillese was master of the half of Paris, following the 
line of the principal avenues from the park of Montsouris to the 
station of the Northern Railway, and the remainder of the 
braver members of the Commune, a mere handful, some 
twenty or so, had taken refuge in the mairie of the eleventh 
arrondissement, in the Boulevaal Voltaire. 

They were silent when he concluded his narration, and 
Maurice, his glance vaguely wandering over the city through 
the open window that let in the soft, warm air of evening, 
murmured : 

“Well, the work goes on ; Paris continues to burn ! ” 

It was true : the flames were becoming visible again in the 
increasing darkness and the heavens were reddened once 
more with the ill-omened light. That afternoon the powder 
magazine at the Luxembourg had exploded with a frightful 
detonation, which gave rise to a report that the Pantheon had 
collapsed and sunk into the catacombs. All that day, more- 
over, the conflagrations of the night pursued their course un- 
checked ; the Palace of the Council of State and the 
Tuileries were burning still, the Ministry of Finance con- 
tinued to belch forth its billowing clouds of smoke. A dozen 
times Henriette was obliged to close the window against the 
shower of blackened, burning paper that the hot breath of the 
fire whirled upward into the sky, whence it descended to 
earth again in a fine rain of fragments; the streets of Paris 
were covered with them, and some were found in the fields of 
Normandy, thirty leagues away. And now it was not the 
western and southern districts alone which seemed devoted to 
destruction, the houses in the Rue Royale and those of the 
Croix-Rouge and the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs : the 
entire eastern portion of the city appeared to be in flames, the 
Hotel de Ville glowed on the horizon like a mighty furnace. 
And in that direction also, blazing like gigantic beacon-fires 
upon the mountain tops, were the Theatre-Lyrique, the mairie 
of the fourth arrondissement, and more than thirty houses 
in the adjacent streets, to say nothing of the theater of the 
Porte-Saint-Martin, further to the north, which illuminated 
the darkness of its locality as a stack of grain lights up the 
deserted, dusky fields at night. There is no doubt that in 
many cases the incendiaries were actuated by motives of per- 
sonal revenge ; perhaps, too, there were criminal records 
which the parties implicated had an object in destroying. It 


THE DOWNFALL. 


555 


was no longer a question of self-defense with the Commune, 
of checking the advance of the victorious troops by fire ; a 
delirium of destruction raged among its adherents : the 
Palace of Justice, the Hotel-Dieu and the cathedral of Notre- 
Dame escaped by the merest chance. They would destroy 
solely for the sake of destroying, would bury the effete, rotten 
humanity beneath the ruins of a world, in the hope that from 
the ashes might spring a new and innocent race that should 
realize the primitive legends of an earthly paradise. And all 
that night again did the sea of flame roll its waves over Paris. 

“ Ah, war, war, what a hateful thing it is ! ” said Henriette 
to herself, looking out on the sore-smitten city. 

Was it not indeed the last act, the inevitable conclusion of 
the tragedy, the blood-madness for which the lost fields of 
Sedan and Metz were responsible, the epidemic of destruction 
born from the siege of Paris, the supreme struggle of a 
nation in peril of dissolution, in the midst of slaughter and 
universal ruin ? 

But Maurice, without taking his eyes from the fires that 
were raging in the distance, feebly, and with an effort, mur- 
mured : 

“ No, no ; do not be unjust toward war. It is good ; it has 
its appointed work to do " 

There were mingled hatred and remorse in the cry with 
which Jean interrupted him. 

“ Good God ! When I see you lying there, and know it is 

through my fault Do not say a word in defense of it ; it 

is an accursed thing, is war ! ” 

The wounded man smiled faintly. 

“ Oh, as for me, what matters it ? There is many another 
in my condition. It may be that this blood-letting was neces- 
sary for us. War is life, which cannot exist without its sister, 
death.'’ 

And Maurice closed his eyes, exhausted by the effort it had 
cost him to utter tho.se few words. Henriette signaled Jean 
not to continue the discussion. It angered her ; all her being 
rose in protest against such suffering and waste of human life, 
notwithstanding the calm bravery of her frail woman’s nature, 
with her clear, limpid eyes, in which lived again all the heroic 
spirit of the grandfather, the veteran of the Napoleonic wars. 

Two days more, Thursday and Friday, passed, like their 
predecessors, amid scenes of slaughter and conflagration. The 
thunder of the artillery was incegsant ; the batteries of the 


556 


THE DOWNFALL. 


army of Versailles on the heights of Montmartre roared 
against those that the federates had established at Bellevilfe 
and Pere-Lachaise without a moment’s respite, while the 
latter maintained a desultory fire on Paris. Shells had fallen 
in the Rue Richelieu and the Place Vendome. At evening on 
the 25th the entire left bank was in possession of the regular 
troops, but on the right bank the barricades in the Place 
Chateau d’Eau and the Place de la Bastille continued to hold 
out ; they were veritable fortresses, from which proceeded an 
uninterrupted and most destructive fire. At twilight, while 
the last remaining members of the Commune were stealing 
off to make provision for their safety, Delescluze took his cane 
and walked leisurely away to the barricade that was thrown 
across the Boulevard Voltaire, where he died a hero’s death. 
At daybreak on the following morning, the 26th, the Chateau 
d’Eau and Bastille positions were carried, and the Communists, 
now reduced to a handful of brave men who were resolved to 
sell their lives dearly, had only la Villette, Belleville, and 
Charonne left to them. And for two more days they remained 
and fought there with the fury of despair. 

On Friday evening, as Jean was on his way from the Place 
du Carrousel to the Rue des Orties, he witnessed a summary 
execution in the Rue Richelieu that filled him with horror. 
For the last forty-eight hours two courts-martial had been 
sitting, one at the Luxembourg, the other at the Theatre du 
Chatelet ; the prisoners convicted by the former were taken 
into the garden and shot, while those found guilty by the 
latter were dragged away to the Lobau barracks, where a 
platoon of soldiers that was kept there in constant attendance 
for the purpose mowed them down, almost at point-blank 
range. The scenes of slaughter there were most horrible ; 
there were men and women who had been condemned to 
death on the flimsiest evidence : because they had a stain of 
powder on their hands, because their feet were shod with 
army shoes ; there were innocent persons, the victims of pri- 
vate malice, who had been wrongfully denounced, shrieking 
forth their entreaties and explanations and finding no one to 
lend an ear to them ; and all were driven pell-mell against a 
wall, facing the muzzles of the muskets, often so many poor 
wretches in the band at once that the bullets did not suffice 
for all and it became necessary to finish the wounded with 
the bayonet. From morning until night the place was stream- 
ing with blood ; the tumbrils were kept busy bearing away the 


THE DOWNFALL. 


557 


bodies of the dead. And throughout the length and breadth 
of the city, keeping pace with the revengeful clamors of the 
people, other executions were continually taking place, in front 
of barricades, against the walls in the deserted streets, on the 
steps of the public buildings. It was under such circum- 
stances that Jean saw a woman and two men dragged by the 
residents of the quartier before the officer commanding the 
detachment that was guarding the Theatre Frangais. The 
citizens showed themselves more bloodthirsty than the sol- 
diery, and those among the newspapers that had resumed 
publication were howling for measures of extermination. A 
threatening crowd surrounded the prisoners and was particu- 
larly violent against the woman, in whom the excited bour- 
geois beheld one of those pHroleuses who were the constant 
bugbear of terror-haunted imaginations, whom they accused of 
prowling by night, slinking along the darkened streets past 
the dwellings of the wealthy, to throw cans of lighted petro- 
leum into unprotected cellars. This woman, was the cry, had 
been found bending over a coal-hole in the Rue Sainte-Anne. 
And notwithstanding her denials, accompanied by tears and 
supplications, she was hurled, together with the two men, to 
the bottom of the ditch in front of an abandoned barricade, 
and there, lying in the mud and slime, they were shot with as 
little pity as wolves caught in a trap. Some by-passers 
stopped and looked indifferently on the scene, among them a 
lady hanging on her husband’s arm, while a baker’s boy, who 
was carrying home a tart to .someone in the neighborhood, 
whistled the refrain of a popular air. 

As Jean, sick at heart, was hurrying along the street toward 
the house in the Rue des Orties, a sudden recollection flashed 
across his mind. Was not that Chouteau, the former member 
of his squad; whom he had seen, in the blouse of a respectable 
workman, watching the execution and testifying his approval 
of it in a loud-mouthed way ? He was a proficient in his role 
of bandit, traitor, robber, and assassin ! For a moment the 
corporal thought he would retrace his steps, denounce him, 
and send him to keep company with the other three. Ah, the 
sadness of the thought; the guilty ever escaping punishment, 
parading their unwhipped infamy in the bright light of day, 
while the innocent molder in the earth ! 

Henriette had come out upon the landing at the sound of 
footsteps coming up the stairs, where she welcomed Jean with 
a manner that indicated great alarm. 


558 


THE DOWNFALL. 


“ ’Sh ! he has been extremely violent all day long. The 

major was here, I am in despair ” 

Bouroche, in fact, had shaken his head ominously, saying 
he could promise nothing as yet. Nevertheless the patient 
might pull through, in spite of all the evil consequences he 
feared ; he had youth on his side. 

“ Ah, here you are at last,” Maurice said impatiently to 
Jean, as soon as he set eyes on him. “ I have been waiting 
for you. What is going on — how do matters stand ? ” And 
supported by the pillows at his back, his face to the window 
which he had forced his sister to open for him, he pointed 
with his finger to the city, where, on the gathering darkness, 
the lambent flames were beginning to rise anew. “ You see, 
it is breaking out again ; Paris is burning. All Paris will burn 
this time ! ” 

As soon as daylight began to fade, the distant quarters be- 
yond the Seine had been lighted up by the burning of the 
Grenier d’Abondance. From time to time there was an out- 
burst of flame, accompanied by a shower of sparks, from the 
smoking ruins of the Tuileries, as some wall or ceiling fell 
and set the smoldering timbers blazing afresh. Many houses, 
where the fire was supposed to be extinguished, flamed up 
anew ; for the last three days, as soon as darkness descended 
on the city it seemed as if it were the signal for the conflagra- 
tions to break out again ; as if the shades of night had breathed 
upon the still glowing embers, reanimating them, and scattering 
them to the four corners of the horizon. Ah, that city of the 
damned, that had harbored fora week within its bosom the 
demon of destruction, incarnadining the sky each evening as 
soon as twilight fell, illuminating with its infernal torches the 
nights of that week of slaughter ! And when, that night, the 
docks at la Villette burned, the light they shed upon the huge 
city was so intense that it seemed to be on fire in every part 
at once, overwhelmed and drowned beneath the sea of flame. 
“ Ah, it is the end ! ” Maurice repeated. “ Paris is doomed ! ” 
He reiterated the words again and again with apparent rel- 
ish, actuated by a feverish desire to hear the sound of his voice 
once more, after the dull lethargy that had kept him tongue- 
tied for three days. But the sound of stifled sobs caused him 
to turn his head. 

“ What, sister, you, brave little woman that you are ! You 

weep because I am about to die ” 

She interrupted him, protesting : 


THE DOWNFALL. 


559 


“ But you are not going to die ! ” 

“Yes, yes ; it is better it should be so ; it must be so. Ah, 
I shall be no great loss to anyone. Up to the time the war 
broke out I was a source of anxiety to you, I cost you dearly in 
heart and purse. All the folly and the madness I was guilty of, 
and which would have landed me, who knows where ? in prison, 
in the gutter ” 

Again she took the words from his mouth, exclaiming 
hotly : 

“ Hush ! be silent ! — you have atoned for all.” 

He reflected a mornent. “ Yes, perhaps I shall have atoned, 
when I am dead. Ah, Jean, old fellow, you didn’t know what 
a service you were rendering us all when you gave me that 
bayonet thrust.” 

But the other protested, his eyes swimming with tears : 

“ Don’t, I entreat you, say such things ! do you wish to make 
me go and dash out my brains against a wall ? ” 

Maurice pursued his train of thought, speaking in hurried, 
eager tones. 

“ Remember what you said to me the day after Sedan, that 
it was not such a bad thing, now and then, to receive a good 
drubbing. And you added that if a man had gangrene in his 
system, if he saw one of his limbs wasting from mortification, 
it would be better to take an ax and chop off that limb than 
to die from the contamination of the poison. 1 have many a 
time thought of those words since I have been here, without a 
friend, immured in this city of distress and madness. And I 

am the diseased limb, and it is you who have lopped it off ” 

He went on with increasing vehemence, regardless of the sup- 
plications of his terrified auditors, in a fervid tirade that abounded 
with symbols and striking images. It was the untainted, the 
reasoning, the substantial portion of France, the peasantry, the 
tillers of the soil, those who had always kept close contact 
with their mother Earth, that was suppressing the outbreak of 
the crazed, exasperated part, the part that had been vitiated 
by the Empire and led astray by vain illusions and empty 
dreams ; and in the performance of its duty it had had to cut 
deep into the living flesh, without being fully aware of what 
it was doing. But the baptism of blood, French blood, was 
necessary ; the abominable holocaust, the living sacrifice, in 
the midst of the purifying flames. Now they had mounted 
the steps of the Calvary and known their bitterest agony ; the 
crucified nation had expiated its faults and would be born 


560 


THE DOWNFALL. 


again. “ Jean, old friend, you and those like you are strong in 
your simplicity and honesty. Go, take up the spade and the 
trowel, turn the sod in the abandoned field, rebuild the house ! 
As for me, you did well to lop me off, since I was the ulcer 
that was eating away your strength ! ” 

After that his language became more and more incoherent ; 
he insisted on rising and going to sit by the window. “ Paris 
burns, Paris burns ; not a stone of it will be left standing. 
Ah ! the fire that I invoked, it destroys, but it heals ; yes, the 
work it does is good. Let me go down there ; let me help 
to finish the work of humanity and liberty ” 

Jean had the utmost difficulty in getting him back to bed, 
while Henriette tearfully recalled memories of their childhood, 
and entreated him, for the sake of the love they bore each other, 
to be calm. Over the immensity of Paris the fiery glow deepened 
and widened ; the sea of flame seemed to be invading the 
remotest quarters of the horizon ; the heavens were like the 
vaults of a colossal oven, heated to red heat. And athwart the 
red light of the conflagrations the dense black smoke-clouds 
from the Ministry of Finance, which had been burning three 
days and given forth no blaze, continued to pour in unbroken, 
slow procession. 

The following, Saturday, morning brought with it a de- 
cided improvement in Maurice’s condition : he was much 
calmer, the fever had subsided, and it afforded Jean inex- 
pressible delight to behold a smile on Henriette’s face once 
more, as the young woman fondly reverted to her cherished 
dream, a pact of reciprocal affection between the three of 
them, that should unite them in a future that might yet be one 
of happiness, under conditions that she did not care to form- 
ulate even to herself. Would destiny be merciful ? Would it 
save them all from an eternal farewell by saving her brother ? 
Her nights were spent in watching him ; she never stirred out- 
side that chamber, where her noiseless activity and gentle 
ministrations were like a never-ceasing caress. And Jean, 
that evening, while sitting with his friends, forgot his great 
sorrow in a delight that astonished him and made him tremble. 
The troops had carried Belleville and the Buttes-Chaumont 
that day ; the only remaining point where there was any resist- 
ance now was the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, which had been 
converted into a fortified camp. It seemed to him that the 
insurrection was ended ; he even declared that the troops had 
ceased to shoot their prisoners, who were being collected in 


THE DOWNFALL. 


561 

droves and sent on to Versailles. He told of one of those 
bands that he had seen that morning on the quai^ made up of 
men of every class, from the most respectable to the lowest, 
and of women of all ages and conditions, wrinkled old hags 
and young girls, mere children, not yet out of their teens ; 
pitiful aggregation of misery and revolt, driven like cattle by 
the soldiers along the street in the bright sunshine, and that 
the people of Versailles, so it was said, received with revilings 
and blows. 

But Sunday was to Jean a day of terror. It rounded out 
and fitly ended that accursed week. With the triumphant 
rising of the sun on that bright, warm Sabbath morning he 
shudderingly heard the news that was the culmination of all 
preceding horrors. It was only at that late day that the 
public was informed of the murder of the hostages ; the arch- 
bishop, the cure of the Madeleine and others, shot at la 
Roquette on Wednesday, the Dominicans of Arcueil coursed 
like hares on Thursday, more priests and gendarmes, to the 
number of forty-seven in all, massacred in cold blood in the 
Rue Haxo on Friday ; and a furious cry went up for ven- 
geance, the soldiers bunched the last prisoners they made and 
shot them in mass. All day long on that magnificent Sunday 
the volleys of musketry rang out in the courtyard of the 
Lobau barracks, that were filled with blood and smoke and 
the groans of the dying. At la Roquette two hundred and 
twenty-seven miserable wretches, gathered in here and there 
by the drag-net of the police, were collected in a huddle, and 
the soldiers fired volley after volley into the mass of human 
beings until there was no further sign of life. At Pere-. 
Lachaise, which had been shelled continuously for four days 
and was finally carried by a hand-to-hand conflict among the 
graves, a hundred and forty-eight of the insurgents were 
drawn up in line before a wall, and when the firing ceased the 
stones were weeping great tears of blood ; and three of them, 
despite their wounds, having succeeded in making their 
escape, they were retaken and despatched. Among the 
twelve thousand victims of the Commune, who shall say how 
many innocent people suffered for every malefactor who met 
his deserts ! An order to .stop the executions had been issued 
from Versailles, so it was said, but none the less the slaughter 
still went on ; Thiers, while hailed as the savior of his coun- 
try, was to bear the stigma of having been the Jack Ketch of 
Paris, and Marshal MacMahon, the vanquished of Froesch- 


562 


THE DOWNFALL. 


wilier, whose proclamation announcing the triumph of law and 
order was to be seen on every wall, was to receive the credit 
of the victory of Pere-Lachaise. And in the pleasant sun- 
shine Paris, attired in holiday ’garb, appeared to be en fHe ; 
the reconquered streets were filled with an enormous crowd ; 
men and women, glad to breathe the air of heaven once more, 
strolled leisurely from spot to spot to view the smoking ruins ; 
mothers, holding their little children by the hand, stopped for 
a moment and listened with an air of interest to the deadened 
crash of musketry from the Lobau barracks. 

When Jean ascended the dark staircase of the house in the 
Rue des Orties, in the gathering obscurity of that Sunday even- 
ing, his heart was oppressed by a chill sense of impending evil. 
He entered the room, and saw at once that the inevitable end 
was come ; Maurice lay dead on the little bed ; the hemor- 
rhage predicted by Bouroche had done its work. The red 
light of the setting sun streamed through the open window 
and rested on the wall as if in a last farewell ; two tapers were 
burning on a table beside the bed. And Henriette, alone with 
her dead, in her widow’s weeds that she had not laid aside, was 
weeping silently. 

At the noise of footsteps she raised her head, and shud- 
dered on beholding Jean. He, in his wild despair, was about 
to hurry toward her and seize her hands, mingle his grief with 
hers in a sympathetic clasp, but he saw the little hands were 
trembling, he felt as by instinct the repulsion that pervaded 
all her being and was to part them for evermore. Was not 
all ended between them now ? Maurice’s grave would be 
there, a yawning chasm, to part them as long as they should 
live. And he could only fall to his knees by the bedside of 
his dead friend, sobbing softly. After the silence had lasted 
some moments, however, Henriette spoke : 

“I had turned my back and was preparing a cup of bouil- 
lon, when he gave a cry. I hastened to his side, but had 
barely time to reach the bed before he expired, with n>y name 
upon his lips, and yours as well, amid an outgush of blood ” 

Her Maurice, her twin brother, whom she might almost be 
said to have loved in the prenatal state, her other self, whom 
she had watched over and saved ! sole object of her affection 
since at Bazeilles she had seen her poor Weiss set against a 
wall and shot to death ! And now cruel war had done its 
worst by her, had crushed her bleeding heart ; henceforth her 
way through life was to be a solitary one, widowed and for- 


THE DOWNFALL. 563 

saken as she was, with no one upon whom to bestow her 
love. 

bon sang ! " cried Jean, amid his sobs, “behold my 
work ! My poor little one, for whom I would have laid down 
my life, and whom I murdered, brute that I am ! What is to 
become of us ? Can you ever forgive me ? ” 

At that moment their glances met, and they were stricken 
with consternation at what they read in each other’s eyes. 
The past rose before them, the secluded chamber at Remilly, 
where they had spent so many melancholy yet happy days. 
His dream returned to him, that dream of which at first he 
had been barely conscious and which even at a later period 
could not be said to have assumed definite shape : life down 
there in the pleasant country by the Meuse, marriage, a little 
house, a little field to till whose produce should suffice for the 
needs of two people whose ideas were not extravagant. Now 
the dream was become an eager longing, a penetrating con- 
viction that, with a wife as loving and industrious as she, exist- 
ence would be a veritable earthly paradise. And she, the 
tranquillity of whose mind had never in those days been 
ruffled by thoughts of that nature, in the chaste and uncon- 
scious bestowal of her heart, now saw clearly and understood 
the true condition of her feelings. That marriage, of which 
she had not admitted to herself the possibility, had been, 
unknown to her, the object of her desire. The seed that had 
germinated had pushed its way in silence and in darkness ; it 
was love, not sisterly affection, that she bore toward that 
young man whose company had at first been to her nothing 
more than a source of comfort and consolation. And that was 
what their eyes told each -other, and the love thus openly 
expressed could have no other fruition than an eternal fare- 
well. It needed but that frightful sacrifice, the rending of 
their heart-strings by that supreme parting, the prospect of 
their life’s happiness wrecked amid all the other ruins, swept 
away by the crimson tide that ended their brother’s life. 

With a slow and painful effort Jean rose from his knees. 

“ Farewell ! ” 

Henriette stood motionless in her place. 

“ Farewell ! ” 

But Jean could not tear himself away thus. Advancing to 
the bedside he sorrowfully scanned the dead man’s face, with 
its lofty forehead that seemed loftier still in death, its wasted 
features, its dull eyes, whence the wild look that had occa- 


5^4 


THE DOWNFALL. 


sionally been seen there in life had vanished. He longed to 
give a parting kiss to his little one, as he had called him so 
many times, but dared not. It seemed to him that his hands 
were stained with his friend’s blood ; he shrank from the horror 
of the ordeal. Ah, what a death to die, amid the crashing 
ruins of a sinking world ! On the last day, among the shat- 
tered fragments of the dying Commune, might not this last 
victim have been spared ? He had gone from life, hungering 
for justice, possessed by the dream that haunted him, the 
sublime and unattainable conception of the destruction of the 
old society, of Paris chastened by fire, of the field dug up 
anew, that from the soil thus renewed and purified might 
spring the idyl of another golden age. 

His heart overflowing with bitter anguish, Jean turned and 
looked out on Paris. The setting sun lay on the edge of the 
horizon, and its level rays bathed the city in a flood of vividly 
red light. The windows in thousands of houses flamed as if 
lighted by fierce fires within ; the roofs glowed like beds of live 
coals ; bits of gray wall and tall, sober-hued monuments 
flashed in the evening air with the sparkle of a brisk fire of 
brushwood. It was like the show-piece that is reserved for 
the conclusion of a fete, the huge bouquet of gold and crim- 
son, as if Paris were burning like a forest of old oaks and 
soaring heavenward in a rutilant cloud of sparks and flame. 
The fires were burning still ; volumes of reddish smoke con- 
tinued to rise into the air ; a confused murmur in the distance 
sounded on the ear, perhaps the last groans of the dying 
Communists at the Lobau barracks, or it may have been the 
happy laughter of women and children, ending their pleasant 
afternoon by dining in the open air at the doors of the wine- 
shops. And in the midst of all the splendor of that royal 
sunset, while a large part of Paris was crumbling away in 
ashes, from plundered houses and gutted palaces, from the 
torn-up streets, 'from the depths of all that ruin and suffering, 
came sounds oPlife. 

Then Jean had a strange experience. It seemed to him that 
in the slowly fading daylight, above the roofs of that flaming 
city, he beheld the dawning of another day. And yet the sit- 
uation might well be considered irretrievable. Destiny ap- 
peared to have pursued them with her utmost fury ; the suc- 
cessive disasters they had sustained were such as no nation in 
history had ever known before : defeat treading on the heels 
of defeat, their provinces torn from them, an indemnity oi 


THE DOWNFALL. 


5^5 


milliards to be raised, a most horrible civil war that had been 
quenched in blood, their streets cumbered with ruins and un- 
buried corpses, without money, their honor gone, and order to 
be re-established out of chaos ! His share of the universal 
ruin was a heart lacerated by the loss of Maurice and Hen- 
riette, the prospect of a happy future swept away in the fu- 
rious storm. And still, beyond the flames of that furnace 
whose fiery glow had not subsided yet, Hope, the eternal, sat 
enthroned in the limpid serenity of the tranquil heavens. It 
was the certain assurance of the resurrection of perennial 
nature, of imperishable humanity ; the harvest that is promised 
to him who sows and waits ; the tree throwing out a new and 
vigorous shoot to replace the rotten limb that has been lopped 
away, which was blighting the young leaves with its vitiated 
sap. 

“ Farewell ! ” Jean repeated with a sob. 

“ Farewell ! ” murmured Henriette, her bowed face hidden 
in her hands. 

The neglected field was overgrown with brambles, the roof- 
tree of the ruined house lay on the ground ; and Jean, bearing 
his heavy burden of affliction with humble resignation, went 
his way, his face set resolutely toward the future, toward the 
glorious and arduous task that lay before him and his coun- 
trymen, to create a new France, 


THE END. 




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WORKS OF 

W. C. H U DSON 

(BARCLAY NORTH). 


** Few story-writers have jumped so quickly into popular favor as 

W. C. Hudson (Barclay North) There is a rattle and a dash 

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THE DIAMOND BUTTON: WHOSE WAS IT ? 

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A NEW BOOK BY MAX O’RELL. 


ENGLISH PHARISEES, 

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And other Anglo-French Typical Characters, 

By MAX O’RELL, 

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One Volume^ 12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, $1,50, 


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thing else he has done.” — Kate Field's Washmgton. 

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, For Sale by all Booksellers, 

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Adapted from the French of the Baronne Staffe. With an Intn 
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Cassell Publishing Company, 

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A Story of the Morals anil Maaoers of the Day. 

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THE DOWNFALl 


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